


Circulaire

by gonetoarcadia



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universes, F/M, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Reverse Big Bang Challenge, Time Loop, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 16:35:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/813674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonetoarcadia/pseuds/gonetoarcadia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world ends on a Wednesday. An anonymous invading force interested in nothing but destruction wipes out most of the world’s major urban centres within an hour. In the aftermath, with the few heroes left alive bitterly divided between moving forward or looking for a way back, Tony Stark and Steve Rogers set out to find out what happened, and make sure that it never does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Circulaire

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Cap/Ironman 2013 Reverse Bang, inspired by espada's [incredible art](http://espadas.livejournal.com/131489.html).

* * *

**circulaire** , _adjective  
_ Qui effectue un mouvement circulaire, qui décrit un cercle.

* * *

**  
10.01**

Everyone has a different idea of how the world ends.

For some it’s a meteor strike, while for others it’s the specter of a global pandemic, or a nuclear war that colours their imagination. Zombies are a trendy device, although eminently impractical. A new ice age is much more likely, although of course the definition of ‘end of the world’ has to be narrowed to ‘end of human civilization,’ but for most people that’s basically synonymous.

Tony Stark’s idea of the end of the world had always been vaguely _War of the Worlds_ -tinged, largely a product of a childhood spent reading Wells, Asimov, and Heinlein. There was something strange and romantic about the idea of an alien invasion, or at least contact and conflict with something, or someone, from beyond human experience and understanding. Of course that idea lost some of its shine as Tony went from imaginative child and teenager to an adult with a company to run, stockholders to please, and a (ex)girlfriend plus (ever so slightly secondarily) a world to protect. The whole aliens-actually-invading-led-by-a-Norse-god-straight-out-of-mythology was sort of the final nail in that coffin. Nothing like an impending enslavement by extraterrestrials to make them seem like assholes.

After New York, Tony’s end of the world was simple: a singularity. Nothingness. All things considered it was a reasonably rational fear. It certainly made a lot more sense than all of the doomsday soothsayers who were slightly at a loss after 2012 ended and the Mayan deities didn’t descend upon the world to wreak revenge for the end of a calendar that didn’t even have any pin-up girl pages to mourn the loss of. No, all things considered, he’d lay his money on a gravitational or time-space event that wiped away the whole planet, and probably also the galaxy, if not the universe. At least that’s what he still saw sometimes when he closed his eyes at night. Tony Stark frequently dreamed of the void.

The weird thing – if one was going to pick just one weird thing about everything that followed – was that he was partly right and partly wrong. When the world ended, it came with invaders and it came with anomalies, and a whole lot of other party tricks that didn’t make that much difference. Which sounds like a weird thing to say about the extinction of most of the human race, but at the end of the day (if time could even still be measured in days) the whys and hows didn’t make a whole lot of difference, at least not in the beginning.

Either way the world ended.

*   *   *   *   *

When the end came, it came on a Wednesday and it happened like this:

Around nine am, a lost tourist scanning for street signs near 3rd and East 14th spotted a silver speck in the sky that rapidly became larger and darker. By the time she’d found someone to ask for directions, everyone on the street was staring at the horizon, a growing field of cameras and phones flashing as New Yorkers and visitors alike tried to make sense of the rapidly expanding/approaching shape. Within a minute the thing was streaking overhead, with the sound of an incoming jet. By the time it hit Manhattan at **9:02** with the force of a small nuclear warhead, the whole city, and shortly thereafter the rest of the world, knew that everything was about to change.

The streets filled with sirens, and flashing blue and cherry lights, and no one could decide if they ought to be getting off of the streets or starting a mass exodus. Half of Downtown and Midtown picked the latter, and within twenty minutes all arteries off of the island were jammed and unmoving as unconfirmed reports of attacks in Shanghai, Los Angeles, London, and Dubai started to trickle in over the increasingly frenetic radio.

In Uptown, it was chaos as emergency responders tried to get close to the scene of the crash, and fire trucks, cop cars, and ambulances lined the streets in numbers no one had seen since the Battle of New York, while still more tried to fit in wherever they could.

It was immediately obvious to everyone at the crash site that at least a few dozen were dead, and that the number was probably a lot higher. A whole neighbourhood had been reduced to a post-apocalyptic cratered landscape of twisted metal and broken glass, and there were few people in a half-mile radius that hadn’t been injured. To their credit, the first few that stumbled upright didn’t hesitate before starting to run forward and not back. A stock trader who’d just watched his building razed to the ground worked side by side with a firefighter to try to pull back a slab of blasted concrete that had severed a woman’s arm. She was still breathing when they got her free, and a nurse who was in the wrong place at the wrong time tied a tourniquet while he yelled as loudly as he could that they needed paramedics.

It was a chaotic ten minutes before anything like a police line could be established, and even then it was punctuated by people screaming, running back and forth, and over on the east side of the make-shift barricade, a mother frantically trying to find her children. A fire had already broken out, and the air smelled charred, like smoke and ash and far, far worse things.

In the middle of everything, barely perceptible except to the firefighters climbing over the wreckage, was what was left of what had been, before impact, some kind of air craft. It was beyond recognition by that point, but still has a strange shape, long but angular, and whatever it was, wherever it was going, whoever was flying it – those things were mysteries screaming over the airwaves as frantic military officials, politicians, and people sitting at home listening to police scanners tried to ascertain what had happened, and just how big the consequences were going to be.

No one wondered for long. No one did anything for long.

The people at the top of the Empire State Building, peering through the rail of the observation deck as they tried to get a glimpse of this new national tragedy, were the first ones to see it. The skyline, unusually clear for a warm summer morning, rippled for just a second as though it were water, or like molten glass right before it sets. One woman pointed while another, her partner, reached for their son’s hand. In the space it took for a larger hand to wrap around a smaller one the sky ripped open with a sound like a shockwave, a light and a darkness carving a line across the horizon that splintered with a gasp that tore at the eardrums.

The sky cracked, and that was when the real end began.

*   *   *   *   *

“Get out, get out, everyone get out!”

A third shock ripped through the building, and this time the east wall started to give way, crumbling fast as the floor sagged precariously, steel beams buckling and shrieking as the whole structure started to come apart at the seams. Daylight streamed through a fissure the size of a sedan.

“Down the stairs! Stay away from the elevators. Come on… one at a time! Hurry!”

Ducking under crumbling mortar, Tony grabbed the arm of one of the accountants who’d tripped and fallen. With the ground under their feet swaying like a ship, it was almost an impossible task to wrench her back upright, but the two of them managed, hands seeking for anything solid at all to hold onto on this capsizing vessel.

“Mr. Stark, you have to—“ the woman started to yell as he shoved her almost bodily through the doorway and into the stairwell. There wasn’t time for discussion and debate, not as something collided with the north-facing windows several stories down and then suddenly the glass on this level, caught in a secondary impact, exploded inward in a sparkling mess of jagged fragments. Tony dropped in a second, arms coming up to cover his face and head, but several of the others who were still trying to push into the stair weren’t so lucky. Blood spattered against white paint and with a crack the doorway itself came rolling down, cutting off that route of escape and taking at least two people with it.

When Tony stumbled upright, it was immediately obvious that there were at least a half dozen people still trapped up here with him. Running through a mental blue print of the building and calculating the odds (none of them were good), he staggered toward one of the remaining survivors.

“We have to go – grab the others, carry them if you have to. We are getting out through the north-west stair and we are not leaving anyone behind.”

The man looked dazed, but after a beat he nodded, just as another crash echoed ominously from somewhere else below.

“Alright. But we’d better hurry.”

Understatement of the century. The floor was starting to resemble a steep incline more than a flat surface, and cracks were spider-webbing their way through the tile from the wall.

“This way!” he yelled as loud as he could, and between himself and the two others who still seemed to have their wits about them, they managed to get all six moving down what was left of the hallway and towards the fire exit. One of the men trailing behind was bleeding badly and looked glassy-eyed but he probably wouldn’t live to see it looked after if they didn’t get out _now_. An idea that was punctuated by a loud tearing sound and a rocking blast that swept them all off of their feet.

“Hurry, run!” Tony tried to shout over the sound of his building falling, and he pulled people up with a desperation that made time seem to be moving both fast and extremely slowly. Finally upright again, they made a last ditch break for the exit.

The red sign was a god-send, and Tony wrenched open the door as the other useful one ushered people through. The lights were long out in the stair as the backup generators were probably smears by now, so it was impossible to know from a cursory glance whether the steps were still fully intact. There was nothing left but a wing and a prayer. Grabbing hold of the arm of the one who’d helped the most, Tony held his eyes and gripped tightly.

“Get them down and out. I’m counting on you.”

“We’re not leaving you behind,” the man shot back belligerently, and Tony almost appreciated that. Almost.

“No, I’m leaving you behind. My ride should be arriving and there are other people I need to find.”

After a second, the man nodded, jaw tight, and Tony released him before exchanging a quick glance with the other terrified employees. And then the door was closing behind them and that was that. No more time to waste.

Glancing up as a piece of plaster from the ceiling collapsed not two feet away and took a light fixture down with it, Tony swore under his breath before pushing away from the wall and using the destruction of the floor to his advantage. Taking a deep breath, he fixed on one of the blown out windows in what had once been a conference room, and started to run.

By the time his feet were pushing off of the window ledge he only had a few beats and the space of an indrawn breath before he hit the fractured sunlight of day, the air wrapping around him and then starting to whip by as he launched from the thirty-second floor and into the sky.

Calculations were running behind his eyes, and he saw numbers instead of the broken city streets below. There was no room for error. For a thundering heartbeat he hung before starting to fall, knowing he’d fucked it all up and let them all burn and this was it, this was really it and— and then, just as fast, he was tumbling into the suit which closed around him with a familiarity that would have been reassuring if there was a moment in which to be reassured.

“About time, JARVIS,” Tony bit out as he shot down and banked a hard left before rocketing back up again. “Where’s Pepper? We need Pepper. Now.”

“According to the building surveillance footage, she was last on the twenty-third floor, sir,” JARVIS replied, his calm voice more steadying than anything else could be in this blaze of horror. “I suggest we try the north side.”

“You’ve got it,” Tony replied, and took a swing around as he lined up the entry. At this altitude it was immediately apparent that the entire east side of the building was going, the top floors collapsing down into the hole where a middle chunk had once been and the bottom floors disintegrating under the weight. The people in the lobby were going to be lucky to get out, let alone the ones in the stairs.

No. He’d be back for them. But first he needed to find Pepper. There was no time.

Tony barreled through the half-broken windows of the twenty-third floor, and skidded to a halt as he tried to get his bearings and figure out who was where. Heat signatures quickly showed up on his display as JARVIS sorted through them, trying to find the unique pattern that would identify the one and only Pepper Potts.

“Pepper! Pepper, where are you?” he yelled as loudly as he could as he pushed through and into a bent and broken hall.

There was no answer except for a pair of screams, one of them abruptly cut off as the floor cracked suddenly under foot, a yawning chasm opening up literally in front of Tony’s eyes.

“Pepper!”

Jumping the gap and pulling away the nearby door of a room where JARVIS’ confused inputs indicated a person, probably trapped, Tony scanned frantically for someone alive. A man was hunched over under a conference table, desperately clutching at the leg as if that would somehow keep him safe. He looked up with shock and something like hope when he saw Iron Man standing in the door.

“Help, over here, I don’t think I can get up!”

“I’ll get you out,” Tony shouted back, and the ground shuddered again. “Hold on—“

But there was no holding on, because even as he moved forward, the entire floor went. With no way to stop it or hold anything up, the entire floor of the building slumped, tilted, and then, in a mass of falling concrete, glass, steel, and wire, the entire thing fell.

The next few moments didn’t make much sense. A portion of a beam came down hard on Tony’s legs, and he plummeted hard, wondering for a second if this was it and he’d just go out here and now, trapped in the ruins of Stark tower. The beat of adrenaline and a cold, icy fear drove him forward though, and he managed to shift the beam with a creak and a gasp. Tony pried his legs loose to find himself on another floor, completely demolished, and also about to go. It was like a surreal dream, or some kind of painting, the sort that Pepper had always dismissed as ‘a lot of nonsense about childhood and probably done under the influence.’ And then—

And then Pepper. The one and only Pepper Potts.

“Pepper…?” he gasped out, shaking free of the debris as he staggered past one twisted body to another. “Pepper. No. No no no no no. Pepper. Potts, come on.” A streak of blood trailed from her forehead down her face, but otherwise she looked almost as if she were asleep. He’d almost have believed it if it weren’t for the half-ton slab of concrete crushing her chest.

“Pepper?” he asked again blankly, glove reaching for her hand with its usual perfect manicure and lightly splayed fingers. “Pepper, come on. We need to get out.”

And then the floor cracked again, and everything was sliding the other way now, and Tony watched without understanding as Pepper slipped unmoving down, down, and away. Her hand, as it slid apart from his, was the last thing he saw as another tremor brought another cascade of falling metal down too. He didn’t move to stop it, because it didn’t make any sense. Pepper’s pale gold finger nails and her unmoving hand were the only things he could see, and now they too were gone down into the dark.

“…sir?” JARVIS asked, apparently repeating something he’d already said. “Sir you need to leave the premises now. You may still be able to rescue survivors if you head around to the—“

Tony didn’t hear the rest. The end of JARVIS’ sentence was drowned out by the roar of the thrusters as he shot out, Iron Man arcing red and gold back into the sun as he turned and flew straight up into the sky. The city stretched out below him, a battlefield in every direction as missiles streaked past and fire and destruction rained down.

There wasn’t anything left. Nothing left except to kill whoever had done this thing, or to go out trying. Preferably both. With a snarl, Tony launched himself at the nearest black and silver ship-like construction, the thing oblong and pointed with angles that made little sense.

“Everything we’ve got JARVIS,” he gritted out.

“Sir, that’s not advisable—”

“EVERYTHING WE’VE GOT, JARVIS!”

Before he could follow through, before he could do anything, a rocket screamed across the sun as it impacted with the armour, blowing him clear out of the sky in one heart-stopping, breath-stealing impact and explosion.

“Sir, hold on,” was all Tony heard as the wind whistled through a crack in the face plate, gravity doing the rest of the work. There was a sound from high overhead that he only hoped was the finishing deal, and then – oh, and then – then the falling came to an end, and there was only darkness.

* * *

 

 

**09.02**

“Is he going to be alright?”

“Probably not, but that’s no different than usual.”

“Not the time. We need to get him out of the armour.”

“It’s alright. The AI will help us.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. Here, you see?”

“Thank god. Stark? Tony, can you hear me?”

“It might be better if he stays out.”

“Maybe, but we don’t have that luxury. Come on, I need to wake him up.”

“Stark, come on. Don’t leave us hanging.”

“Tony…?”

*   *   *   *   *

There was a faint, uneven light, and the sound of voices. That was the first thing Tony was aware of when he opened his eyes, that and the fact that he hurt like a son of a bitch. It was hard to tell immediately what ached and what didn’t, because it all seemed like a generally unpleasant haze, and the worst of it seemed to be oddly concentrated behind his left eyeball. Blinking to try to focus through it, Tony took stock of the situation.

He seemed to be half-lying, half-propped on some sort of bed, and the light – when he managed to turn his head to look at it – was coming from a candle on a nearby table that flickered as if it sat a little too close to a draft.

So, alive. That was something. He didn’t know what else. Oh, and still clothed. That was a definite plus, all things considered.

Slowly pushing himself upright, Tony slid his legs off of the bed and to the floor, where his feet touched what felt like bare cement. Judging by the lack of windows in the small room, he’d conjecture that this was probably a basement somewhere. Either that or he’d somehow wound up in a conspiracy theorist’s bunker. Hard to tell which one he’d prefer, since the latter probably included some kind of tinned food and a can opener.

His left arm screamed at him when he tried to get up off of the bed and use it for balance, and judging by the particular brand of unpleasantness, he’d wager a guess that he’d dislocated it and someone had put it back for him. Considerate, except that some painkillers would have been nice. At least he seemed to be in – relatively – one piece, and that meant that the biggest question beyond ‘where the fuck am I’ was whether or not the armour was intact. He’d just have to fix it, if it wasn’t, but it would save him time if he didn’t have to. Then again, time probably wasn’t of the essence anymore. Revenge wasn’t something that needed to be hurried, although he was an impatient sort of person by nature.

Moving slowly and carefully to the door (both to finish assessing his own physical condition and to avoid alerting anyone who might be listening), Tony put one hand on it, and then pressed his ear to the flat surface.

Voices. Two. Sounded like a man and a woman, but he couldn’t tell much else. The words were unintelligible, and the tone and pitch varied enough that it gave him no particular clues. Then again, if they’d planned to off him, they probably wouldn’t have bothered putting his shoulder back into the joint, so he was probably holding at least a few cards. He just wouldn’t know if they were a pair of aces or a two and a three until he’d played the hand.

He reached for the handle and pushed the door open a crack, and then further when the thing didn’t squeak obnoxiously. At least whoever’s basement he was in had had the consideration and foresight to oil their door hinges before the end of the world.

“…not happening,” came one of the voices, lowly. Tony slipped down the hallway carefully, trying to keep his steps as inaudible as possible until he’d gathered more information.

“That’s not up to you.” The woman. The woman who sounded suspiciously familiar.

“I’m not letting you put yourself in the line of fire. There are barely any of us left as it is.”

Ah, yes, that one was familiar too. Tony exhaled, unsure if this turn of events made him more concerned or less. Pausing around the corner from the ongoing argument, Tony stood still and listened.

“We can’t stay here. We’ll have a better chance of surviving if we can reach a secured base.” Romanoff’s voice was that sort of flat calm she always adopted when she really, really wanted to raise it. As a frequent recipient of that tone, Tony would recognize it anywhere.

“And then what? You think having Stark with us is going to make a difference? If he’ll even agree to help us?”

Rogers’ voice was tight – even more so than usual. For perhaps the first time ever, Tony found he couldn’t blame him.

“Would you rather give up? Stay here until we run out of food? Slowly die of starvation?”

“Of course not, but—”

“There is no but.”

“What you’re suggesting doesn’t make sense. We can’t fight them, not like this.”

Alright, so Earth’s mightiest heroes seemed to be dispersed, at a distinct disadvantage, and in the middle of a disagreement. Wonderful. Tony still felt a little light-headed, and he blamed his feeling of detachment on that. Not much point in hiding out anymore, though, so he stepped away from the wall before rounding the corner. And ah, here they were. Mr. Quaker Oatmeal and Mata Hari themselves.

“You know, marital disputes are generally considered bad form when they wake the children.” His voice was scratchy to his own ears.

Both of the others turned at once, and Natasha’s eyes flashed for a moment before her usual impassive expression fell into place. She looked more or less alright, if a little scratched up, and Rogers – who seemed to be wearing some kind of ridiculously mismatched and ill-fitting set of clothing – looked about the same. Wherever they’d been and whatever scraps they’d gotten into, they’d avoided the worst of it. Which was… curious.

“Glad you’re finally admitting your real maturity,” Natasha greeted with a small nod and the faintest tip upwards of her mouth.

“Tony,” Cap replied, looking simultaneously relieved and still tense as hell. “Good to see you awake.”

Exhaling a breath, Tony stepped into the room properly before looking around. Definitely a basement, and not a particularly well stocked one. There wasn’t even an X-Box. He really was regretting that it hadn’t been a bunker.

“How long was I out?”

“Around thirty-six hours, off and on. You were up for a bit yesterday, but I’d be surprised if you remember. You went out again pretty fast after I reset your arm,” Cap replied, and he reached up to rub his cheek quickly. Tony didn’t imagine the man needed much sleep, but he looked like he hadn’t had any in weeks. Funny what thirty-six hours could do. “Concussion,” he supplied helpfully after a beat.

“Explains the headache. Apologies for usurping your Sleeping Beauty title. What’s the status above ground?”

Padding over to the narrow grey sofa that looked like it had probably come from Ikea (terrible), Tony rolled his sore shoulder before turning and sitting on the couch’s arm so that he could face the other two. Romanoff shifted lightly on her feet, giving the impression of a caged tiger more than anything.

“How much do you remember?”

“Not much. The tower went, and I didn’t manage to get people out. When I headed up to take the fight outside, I took a hit before I could do any damage.”

Rogers slid his hands into his wrong-sized pockets, looking more than slightly grey in the face. He didn’t seem to be taking it well. Then again, Tony was pretty sure that the calm he himself was currently experiencing was probably not the normal reaction one had to mass death and destruction. Upon further reflection, this was probably what extended shock felt like. Good to know.

Since Rogers was doing a fairly apt impression of someone who was both queasy and mute, Romanoff stepped in to fill in the gaps.

“Most of the cities are gone. Or they were, last we heard. Probably all of them by now.” Steve rocked back on his heels slightly, but Natasha ignored him before continuing. “The intel we’ve been getting is sporadic. We got a communication this morning saying that there are a few pockets of resistance developing in rural areas, to the north. And in the mountains.”

“Are you telling me that humanity’s last bastions of hope are in Canada, Nepal and Switzerland? What are they going to do? Picket the bad guys to death?”

Natasha shrugged one shoulder, the dark grey sweater she wore moving with it.

“We’re waiting to hear more.”

Silence hung for a moment as the three of them considered each other awkwardly. Surprisingly it was Rogers who broke the stillness, moving with a coiled precision that spoke to a vast reserve of anxious energy. He sat on the other end of the small couch and dropped his head for a moment before looking up first at Natasha and then at Tony.

“They’re not humanoid. Best guess so far is another invasion, but there’s no Loki or anyone else at the head as far as we can tell. If they want anything besides to kill a lot of people, they haven’t shown any sign of it yet.”

No harvesting of natural resources, so not Martians after all. Interesting. Hard to conjecture what someone was after when you didn’t have enough data. This level of devastation tended to imply a grudge, or at least a pretty thorough commitment to erasing an entire species, but the why and the how were so far out of reach right now that it was nearly pointless to try. So far the only thing Tony had to go on was a lot of death, and the mental image of gold finger nails on a pale hand. He stopped himself abruptly there, breath hitching slightly before returning to a normal rhythm.

“…you guys have a rooftop patio, or maybe some kind of rock garden? I could really go for a barbecue right now.”

Rogers and Romanoff exchanged quick glances, and Romanoff brushed some red hair behind her ear before gesturing slightly towards a door on the far wall (far being relative, since the room was approximately the size of Pepper’s old closet).

“Some of the top half is still standing. Just be careful. It’s dark out right now, but we don’t want to draw attention to our location.”

“So no on the barbecue, then.”

Standing, Tony reached up to rub his shoulder and try to massage some normal sensation back into it. His head really did still hurt like a motherfucker, but he was also basically migraine proof these days. It went with the probably irreparably damaged liver.

“Where’s my suit?”

“Closet,” Rogers replied shortly, and Tony nodded. He’d find out how badly it was damaged when he returned, but if he stayed here right now he was probably going to have some kind of panic attack and he really wasn’t a fan of those. It had been a good two years since the last one, and he’d be happy not to have to start a Banner-esque ‘X days since last incident’ chart.

“Be good. Don’t have wild monkey sex until I get back. If it’s going to happen I want to watch.”

He caught Romanoff’s eye for just a moment as he moved towards the door, and he certainly wasn’t oblivious to the heavy silence that hung over the room until he’d opened the door, stepped through, and shut it behind him. The darkened basement steps leading upwards were small distraction from the heated, raised voices that came from inside after only a few beats.

“You still think he’s going to be able to help us!?”

“Cap, he’s all we’ve got.”

“We’ve got nothing.”

“And that’s all we’re going to have if we don’t—”

Heading up the basement stairs, Tony actively stopped listening, shutting out everything but the dark. Whether it turned out to be six months, six days, or six minutes, it was shaping up to be a long rest of his life.

*   *   *   *   *

The house, if it could still be called a house, was dilapidated and looked vaguely like it had been razed in two. As Tony picked his way through the bottom floor, trying to step over and around the remains of a small tiled kitchen and what looked like it might once have been some excuse for a TV set, he wondered vaguely who had lived here. Part of him wanted to leave a thank-you note for the loan of the basement, but the other half just wanted to laugh hysterically.

He found a still partially standing flight of stairs leading up into the remains of the house’s second floor and decided to take his chances. The odds of it still being structurally sound were pretty small, but he also didn’t give a shit. A solid half of the roof was missing altogether, and he could see the silhouette of a half-moon through the gap.

The stairs creaked slightly underfoot but seemed stable enough, so Tony held onto the remaining bits of bannister as he climbed. Being quiet and unobtrusive was so far easy enough, and he assumed that if they were at immediate risk of discovery then Romanoff would have locked the basement door and swallowed the key. That was clear enough.

What he wanted right now was to see what there was to see. The glimpse he’d gotten of New York during the first attack had been… difficult to understand, and he felt the urge to take a look now and see if that would help him make the connection. Although the first thing that impressed upon him was the silence. There was no sound of cars, birds, electronics, or people. There was no sound at all except for a soft sigh that was probably the wind blowing across the ruined roof’s shingles. Wherever they were now, it seemed to be an area that was – at least temporarily – free from hostilities.

When Tony reached the upstairs, there wasn’t much to explore since the hallway was so cracked and broken that accessing most of the second floor was out of the question. He wasn’t sure he wanted to, anyway. On the way up he’d spotted a small rocking horse, and the idea of finding its owner if he or she had been home at the time of the assault was not high on his list of things he wanted to do.

There was a window, though. An absurdly still-intact rose window that moonlight streamed through freely, illuminating the dance of dust in the calm air. Moving over to it, Tony stopped, crossed his arms, and looked.

In some ways, there wasn’t much to see. The rubble of what had once been a street was surprisingly bright in spite of the lack of artificial lights to illuminate the silent panorama. Nothing moved, and no one stirred. Wires and charred telephone poles were strewn about, and nearly half of the buildings were gone altogether, nothing more than a faint footprint where the foundation still lay. It was eerie, calming, and stomach-twistingly horrifying all at once.

Tony wasn’t sure how long he stood there, just watching out the window. He kept expecting something to change, but the only thing that did was the sweep of a shadow across the corpses lying in the street as a cloud passed across the moon.

It was an unquantifiable period of time later when the stairs squealed faintly in protest under someone else’s feet, and then the soft sound of footsteps crossed the hall to come and rest beside him, still beside the window. Really he’d expected it to be Romanoff – they were something sort of like friends, or so he’d like to flatter himself – but when he turned his head enough to glimpse the profile of one Steve Rogers, the surprise wasn’t unpleasant. Turning to look back out the window, Tony didn’t feel the need to say anything and the quiet stretched out around them.

“…how’s your head?” The question was quiet and unusually undemanding, so Tony thought before answering.

“I’ll live. Which is more than I can say for most people.”

Steve’s breathing was soft, and when he didn’t answer right away Tony glanced over at him again just to be sure that Captain America wasn’t about to go all axe-murderer on him or something. The movement seemed to stir Steve, though, because he tipped his head enough to meet Tony’s eyes for a moment.

“Seems like.” Helpful. Tony looked back out the window.

“Pepper’s dead.”

“So’s Sharon. So’s Agent Hill. So is everyone.”

Not unexpected, but still jarring. For some reason Tony had thought that SHIELD of all people would have made it through.

“Helicarrier?”

“We were there. The only people who made it out were the ones who could get on a quinjet.”

Explained the fact that both Rogers and Romanoff didn’t look too much worse for the wear. If they’d had to flee immediately, then there hadn’t been much opportunity for bumps and bruises. Although clearly they’d been through some fighting here on the ground.

“And then you decided to come and ride to my rescue, because I’m just so charming that you couldn’t resist.”

There was the slightest change in Cap’s breathing, and Tony almost suspected it was a laugh, but he ultimately decided he’d imagined it.

“We were able to track you, because of the suit. That and we weren’t too far away.”

Made sense. One of the downsides to making yourself available to a group of people was that they could figure out where you were. Although, Tony supposed, in this one instance he couldn’t complain too loudly.

“…thanks.”

“You might want to hold off on the thank you’s.” A point with which Tony whole-heartedly agreed. Instead he decided to change the subject.

“Where’d you get the trendy duds? I feel like we should make that your new uniform. It’s just such a good look.” This time there wasn’t any mistaking the soft laugh.

“Borrowed them. This may surprise you, but the suit’s not that comfortable for sitting around.”

“Might want to reconsider, plaid is not your colour.”

The silence that followed was oddly comfortable. Although Tony had developed a healthy degree of respect for Steve Rogers over the last few years, and maybe even some grudging fondness, they’d never fit easily into the same space. There were a lot of reasons for that, but all of them seemed so inconsequential now that they were standing on the edge of the end of the world. It was Tony who spoke, after a minute.

“Where are we exactly?”

“Close to Jersey,” Steve replied. “There’s still some fighting happening in Midtown.”

“Oh, so you’re saying the view was like this before, too.”

Steve actually turned to look at him this time, and caught in the momentum Tony couldn’t help but look over too.

“None of this feels real.”

After a pause, Tony nodded.

“It sort of feels like looking at a lunar landscape.”

“It was our job to stop this from happening. Now it’s our job to fix it.”

There was a stubborn set to Rogers’ jaw, and Tony realized almost instantly that if he didn’t watch his words carefully he’d wind up as a third party in some kind of ongoing dispute he didn’t have a reference for.

“How exactly do we do that? I’m still not convinced this isn’t all a mass hallucination.”

“No idea, but there’s got to… be a way. We don’t leave things like this. I don’t leave things like this.”

He probably didn’t. Steve Rogers, stubborn asshole and white knight, probably didn’t leave the world in ruins. Tony was somewhat more surprised to find that he felt similarly, if not quite the same way or for the same reasons.

“What happened to ‘sometimes there isn’t a way out’?” He was testing more than anything.

Steve was quiet a moment before his shoulders relaxed a little, and he shifted to lean against the wall next to the window.

“There’s gotta be. We’ve just got to find the wire cutters.”

The edge of Tony’s mouth crept upwards, just a little, and he wondered if they were both just in denial. Possibly. Did it matter, at this point?

“Good thing I have a knack for building my own and you tend to hibernate your way through.”

“Funny.”

“I thought so.”

There was silence again for a while after, but this time Tony would apply a word he’d never have considered for such a situation before, and that word, strangely enough, was companionable. The moon moved overhead, and the night slipped slowly towards what one could only assume was another day.

*   *   *   *   *

It was **5:06** when the radio crackled to life.

“..idow?” The hiss and snap of static made it hard to hear anything at all for a few moments, but then the feed came back again. “Widow, come in.”

Natasha moved towards it in that fluid way of hers that Tony had always admired, although the fierceness around her eyes made him keen to keep his distance. Steve was hovering near the door, looking weary and on edge, and Tony was sprawled across the couch, eyes glued on the little set they’d rigged up to better receive transmissions.

“Hawkeye?” Romanoff asked into the communicator. “This is Black Widow. Come in.”

After eleven agonising seconds of silence, the sound of Barton’s voice came through unmistakably.

“What’s your position?”

“Coordinates haven’t changed. Stark’s awake.”

“Tell him he’s an asshole,” Barton suggested through the wavery radio, and Tony snorted before pushing himself up into a sitting position that didn’t monopolize the whole seating area.

“He’s aware,” Romanoff answered easily enough, although the tautness of her voice was also evident. “What have you got?”

“Something for Stark. Does he have anything we can send data to?”

Catching Natasha’s eyes quickly, Tony nodded. The suit should still be able to access things from the Stark secure server, unless the asshole aliens or whoever had discovered a way to take down satellites as well.

“Send it to the usual place.”

“You got that?” Natasha asked, and it was only a second this time before Clint replied.

“Yeah. We’re on it. There’s something weird going on, and if anyone can tell us what it is, it’s probably him.”

“Probably,” Tony agreed, earning himself a mildly dirty look from Steve. Natasha just ignored them both.

“Can you give us the outline?”

“There’s some kind of… disturbance. Near as we can tell, it’s happening in Arizona, and it matches the read we got from the first tear. The data’s weird, though, and the team we sent in hasn’t come back.”

“Tear?” Tony asked quietly, and Steve nodded before walking across to sit beside him on the couch. It was easier to speak quietly that way.

“That’s what they’re calling the event when the ships came through. We only had time to start analyzing when they hit us, so all we know is that it wasn’t Asgardian in origin, didn’t seem to come from outside.”

Leaning his elbow against the arm rest, Tony tapped his fingers thoughtfully, trying to sort through possibilities and likelihoods. After a moment he got up, abandoning Rogers on the couch.

“Hawk-brain, send the data through. I need a look.”

The closet was dark and cramped, barely illuminated by the candles burning in the main room. The suit itself was battered and dented, but overall in working condition. Tony would straighten out what he could tomorrow, but right now what he needed was the helmet. Pulling it free, he slipped the thing over his face as he walked over and then bent to kneel next to Romanoff.

“JARVIS, uplink to my secure server,” Tony murmured, and on command the lights lit up across the front display, and the central screen flashed through the bio-rhythm authentication process and connected him to the main database.

“Incoming transmission, sir,” JARVIS returned after a beat, and the information appeared across the screen in a wave of numbers and symbols, only some of which made sense.

“Sent you the stuff we got from the first event as well as the strange shit coming out of Arizona. You getting it?”

“Yeah, hold on,” Tony replied as he tried to sort through some of it. “Are you sure this is from the attack? The time flags don’t make any sense.”

“I’m sure. Although is that really that weird? I don’t understand nerd-speak, but from what I can understand if there’s a distortion in space, then—”

“—there’s also a distortion in time,” Tony finished for him. The idea was so breathtakingly absurd and also blindingly obvious that Tony felt a moment of actual satisfaction. It was sort of like watching an apple fall from a tree and realizing that a force must be pulling it down. Beautiful, in its own way. Taking a deep breath, he read the numbers again.

“It’s going to take me a while to get a full bead on this, but you should probably tell Fury that based on what he’s giving me, the anomaly seems to originate about thirty years in the future.”

“How did you know Fury’s—” Steve began to ask, but Tony just waved a hand at him.

“The man is basically a human cockroach, I assume he’s unkillable.”

Natasha made a face that basically meant she agreed, and they waited together for another sound from the set. It took close to a minute, but then, finally, Clint’s voice was back on air.

“Just so I’m clear, are we really suggesting time travel right now?”

“Maybe,” Tony prevaricated, because as much as the latticework of the logic was starting to crystalize for him, there were also about a million questions unanswered. Like who, how, where, when, and why. “I don’t suppose you guys have been experimenting with the fabric of time and space?”

“Not recently,” Clint returned, although his voice was more broken up now. “Word on the street is that there’s someone who has been though.”

“Because that couldn’t possibly go wrong,” Steve’s voice cut in, causing Tony to smile involuntarily (thankfully concealed by the helmet), and after a few seconds Steve was on his other side so he could be close enough to be heard clearly too. “Can you send us that information too, Hawkeye?”

“My pleasure, Cap,” Clint said. “Should be coming your way in a few seconds. What are you guys going to do?”

“Meet up with you,” Natasha replied before either of the other two could answer. The barbed edge to the words, and also her expression, were a clear warning sign. “The plan hasn’t changed. We rendezvous, and then we move to a secure location where we can plan the next move.”

“Not sure we have time for that,” Tony said almost pleasantly as he finished reading the last information packet Barton had thrown his way. On the one hand he was surprised by what was in it, but on the other he wasn’t. Pushing up the mask, Tony arched an eyebrow at Natasha who frowned back.

“We have to fight back.”

“No argument,” Tony replied quickly, and he turned his head enough to catch Steve’s eye. Steve, who nodded almost imperceptibly. Good to know he wasn’t alone on this page. “But what are you going to do, even if you somehow manage to beat the evil aliens? Rebuild? There’s not going to be anyone or anything left to rebuild.”

“What are you thinking?” Rogers asked, off to his left, as Tony tried to keep up with his own thoughts.

“I’m thinking that if there’s a time-space anomaly in Arizona, we need to be there.”

“Did you miss the part where I said we lost the team that went in?” Clint asked, and Natasha’s hands were curling into fists in her lap.

“We rendezvous,” she repeated again flatly. “I’m not chasing impossibilities when we could actually be helping.”

“But if we could go back—” Steve began, and for the first time since he’d woken up in a post-apocalyptic basement, Tony recognized the annoying steel in the man’s voice.

“There’s no going back,” Natasha actually snapped, and Tony held up a hand for peace.

“We don’t know anything yet. Maybe we could—”

“I’m going to go investigate.” Steve, of course. Being the hero. It was like he was constitutionally incapable of letting anyone else have the spotlight. It’d put a serious crimp in Tony’s style if he hadn’t been counting on it this particular time. “The rest of you follow the plan. Head to the meeting point, and then see if you can find any survivors hiding in the area.”

“We can’t—” There was a long pause before the rest came through the radio. “—can’t give you any backup, you know that right?”

“Don’t worry, I’m going with him,” Tony replied steadily. “You and Nikita meet up, go play _Risk_ , and then maybe _Sim City_. Rogers and I are going to go have all the fun and save the world.”

There was a long silence on everyone’s part, and Natasha’s face had slipped back towards the blank mask that signalled she was cutting them off. There was the slightest chance she was going to try to chloroform both of them and then attempt to drag them with her, but on the plus side, there was only a 59% chance she had that stashed on her person right now, as opposed to the usual 99%.

“…is there any way I can talk you out of this?” Clint asked finally, almost unintelligible now.

“Not likely,” Steve replied evenly, and he was making a point not to meet Natasha’s eyes. “We’ll keep you updated on what we find.”

“Then I guess I better wish you good luck. We’re all probably dead anyway, so I guess it doesn’t much matter. Tasha, I’ll see you at the bridge, eighteen-hundred hours.”

“I’ll be there,” she replied flatly, and then there was only silence from the radio. Tony exhaled a breath, wondering exactly how long it’d take Rogers to try to play conciliatory peace-maker. The answer ended up being thirty-three seconds.

“Natasha, someone’s got to—”

She didn’t give him a chance to finish, rising quickly and simply moving past them as if they weren’t even in the same room. Tony watched, not surprised but also a little taken aback as she just turned the corner and disappeared altogether. The sound of the bedroom door closing behind her was definitive enough.

Silence reigned for another few seconds, and when Tony shifted it was just to sit on the floor properly and turn enough that he could meet and hold Steve’s eyes. They were unusually hard to read, here in the dark, but there was a determined set there that was almost a relief in its familiarity.

Silence, once again. Steve lowered his head after a minute and said nothing at all, which was just fine by Tony. Tomorrow would be here soon, and until then there was nothing to say.

* * *

 

 

**08.03**

It was almost like something out of a shitty Hollywood blockbuster. Something with Brad Pitt or Will Smith and way too many special effects and explosions, and probably some kind of stirring instrumental music at the end as it faded to black. Pepper had always hated those movies, which was exactly why Tony always insisted they watch them together. Weird thought now, though. She’d probably hate this, if she could see it.

Spinning in the dim sunlight (it was overcast today, much more New York), Tony flashed over a block that was still smoldering quietly, the last evidence of what had been a lot of people’s lives burning away until there wouldn’t even be any proof that they’d ever been here at all. For whatever reason, that thought churned his stomach more than the fires themselves, and almost as much as the bodies. It was one thing to kill somebody – people died, and that was a fact. It was another to erase their existence, to make it like they’d never been and hadn’t mattered.

Everyone mattered. They were going to keep mattering, and he was going to make sure of it.

After a second pass over the area, he was, he had to admit, starting to gain a real appreciation for what Romanoff and Rogers must have gone through to get him out of New York proper, where the fighting had been the fiercest. The fact that they’d managed to lug both him and the suit as far as they had and somehow keep hidden was a testament to either dedication or stupidity, and given the subjects in question, probably both. When he had a little more free time on his hands he’d make a mental note to smack them both upside the head, or possibly just buy them new cars. Maybe Corvettes. Corvette had been having a good year. Oh, and one for Tony too, because why the hell not?

So: new cars all around when the world wasn’t ended anymore, and in the meantime maybe he could just steal one or something. Didn’t seem to be anyone left to care, and he was pretty handy with hot wiring. Oh, and he totally knew where the best garages and dealerships to raid would be, so basically if you ignored the fact that everyone was dead and everything was terrible, the end of the world was kind of like a personal invitation to play.

He wasn’t exaggerating about everyone being dead, though. In the three hours he and Rogers had been picking their way slowly north through the city, they’d come across exactly one group of survivors. Two families, one with small kids, had taken refuge in some old-timey cellar that had been under a bar, probably a legacy of the good old bootlegging days or something. Thankfully that had been right after they’d split from Romanoff, so Rogers had been able to send word back to her and they’d escorted the group most of the way to the bridge so that they’d be able to benefit from official what-was-left-of-SHIELD sanctioned pickup. Tony had counselled the little girl, who’d looked about three, maybe four, on the best ruses to use to kick Barton in the shins, and Romanoff had pretended not to notice which had been very kind of her. She’d been in better spirits this morning, which was nice, because in the off-chance that they didn’t manage to save the world and he never saw her again, Tony didn’t want to take his leave on bad terms. Maybe she felt the same way, because she’d seen them both off with a hard clasp of a hand, and well wishes. He could appreciate well wishes, since they were probably going to need them.

Circling back around towards were Cap was picking his way through what had once been a laundromat, Tony cut power to the thrusters and came down as slowly as he could manage. The good news of the day had been that the suit wasn’t that badly damaged, and he’d been able to bend out and re-hook up the circuitry that had taken a bit of a beating. The crack in the faceplate was annoying because it made the wind whistle in his ear when he went anything above walking speed, but he supposed that all things considered, he could probably take it.

“Find anything?” Steve asked, all red, white, blue, and spangles. Personally Tony wouldn’t be caught alive or dead in the getup, but he had to concede that of the things they had in their possession, Steve’s uniform offered more body armour than an ill-fitting plaid shirt. So.

“Not much. Don’t head east up this block, there was a school and they won’t be doing any patriotic sing-alongs.” The lines around Steve’s eyes hardened for a moment, but he just nodded. Neither of them needed to go through there, and it was better to be up front about it than be surprised later. Turning slightly, Tony pointed north-west. “According to JARVIS there was a grocery store up there. Since the last three were burned out, maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe you can pack some Twinkies in your very fetching man purse, which I really think brings out your pectorals, by the way. Good call on the shoulder strap.”

Steve snorted and shook his head slightly, but at least the hard set left his eyes again.

“If we have to go all the way to Arizona we’re going to need more than a messenger bag. It’s hard to tell how often we’re going to be able to find supplies.” Between said bag and the shield slung over his back Steve looked like he was off to deliver someone’s mail in a war zone. Then again, considering the state of the US postal service, maybe that was exactly the kind of rebranding they needed. Had needed. Would need? Hard to know right now.

“We’ll cross the bridge of who’s carrying the Dasani when we get to it. For now we should pack light, and see what we find at the Baxter Building.”

Considering the paper he’d read just last month on CERN’s implications for the multiple worlds theory and the eventual possibility of travel between them written by one Reed Richards, maybe he shouldn’t have needed Barton to tell him where to look first.

“How far?” Steve asked, and he reached up a hand to shade his eyes as he tried to assess exactly where the grocery store was, or had been.

“About a quarter mile. You want a lift?”

That got a reluctant smile out of Rogers, who kept trying to slide into full-on Captain America mode. Tony could understand that, but it didn’t mean he wanted to spend the next however long listening to Steve tell him off.

“I’m good, thanks. Besides, you should try to save power. We don’t know when or where we’ll be able to charge the suit, either.”

Fair point, although Tony wasn’t that concerned about it. On the list of things to worry about, being able to generate electricity wasn’t that high, so he would deal with it when it became a real issue. Since he still had 92% reserves, it’d be a while.

“You need to work on your air-sickness. It makes you sound like a rookie.”

“I just don’t much like being hauled around through the air at high speeds without any protection,” Steve returned evenly, although there was a hint of amusement around his mouth as he glanced from Tony back to the path he was probably already charting. “That and you’re not very good at it.”

“Are you insulting the hug-and-fly?” Tony asked, feigning incredulity. “That is a time-honoured tradition. You should be so lucky.”

“I should be so lucky as to never have to do it again. Now come on, we should get moving. I don’t know how long it’s going to take to reach the building once we hit Midtown, and being on the streets after dark isn’t going to be safe.”

“Whatever you say, Cap,” Tony replied, igniting the thrusters and taking off again without another word. Or, well, okay, maybe just a few more. “Last one there has to actually eat the Twinkies.” And then he was gone, leaving Steve to look forward to his delicious, would-probably-last-longer-on-ice-than-even-Captain-America snack.

*   *   *   *   *

“Iron Man, I’ve got movement on my two o’clock.”

The words were hushed as they came through the communicator, and Tony cut power enough so that he wasn’t audibly tearing up the sky.

“What’ve you got?”

“Two or three, I think. Hard to tell. Whatever they are, they’re not survivors.”

Interesting. Maybe they were finally going to get a real look at the sons of bitches that had decided to throw an end of the world party that actually ended the world. Maybe he was finally going to figure out who did this, and how to fix it.

“You want me to come to your location?”

“No. Stay where you are. I want a visual, and if we don’t have to engage then I’d prefer it. We’re trying to keep a low profile, remember?”

“There’s only so low a profile I can keep. What’s your situation, you see anything?”

“Not yet. Looks like—” and then abruptly there was a scratching sound, and Steve started swearing like a sailor which was always a good sign. Tony didn’t even wait for an explanation, he just went in for it.

Dropping out of the sky with all the speed he could muster, he swept over a semi-collapsed roof before ducking into an alleyway and shooting down, straight towards where one Captain America seemed to be in the process of deflecting something large and spindly with his shield. JARVIS only had time to give him a brief readout – no heat trace, but a high energy output, very curious – before he was basically on top of them.

“Cap, duck!” he yelled as he barreled through, and in the space of about two seconds he had both arms locked around whatever it was that had been taking a swing at Steve and pulled it after him, over Steve’s head before taking an abrupt turn upwards and launching the thing into the nearest building. Yeah, he didn’t really do subtle. But that was fine, since the other three Steve had been tracking were already converging.

“What the hell are they?” Steve spat, his voice in Tony’s ear.

“No idea. Let’s take one apart and find out.”

They were long and they moved like spiders. With eight legs – or sort of legs, they didn’t all fit where legs should go – they crept along the ground in a strange rolling motion that didn’t make much sense until they started using the wall to move along too. Then Tony got it, he just really wished he hadn’t. The main bodies were dark, with no discernible faces or optical sensors, and each unnatural leg glinted, reflecting daylight.

“Creepy,” Tony muttered to JARVIS, feeling a little light-headed all over again.

“Extremely, sir,” JARVIS agreed. “I advise proceeding with caution.”

“I appreciate your concern, honey,” Tony answered before diving in again.

Steve was in a bit of a corner, since his hiding spot had left him defensively vulnerable, but he approached that the same way he did any other fight. Although his ‘I’m right and you’re wrong’ attitude drove Tony insane nearly 60% of the time, the man knew how to evaluate a situation and turn a disadvantage into an advantage.

Backing up until he was almost against the nearby wall, Steve only waited until the closest thing got within two feet of him before his right arm was flying faster than Tony could follow, shield in hand as he smashed it into the thing’s legs, sending it careening to the side. There was a high-pitched noise, all of a sudden, that made Tony want to grit his teeth, and then within two heartbeats the other two were moving significantly faster, rolling legs flashing up with what were now evidently barbed ends. Because obviously they had to have those.

Tony blew into the middle of it again, trusting innately that Steve would have his back in the same manner. A repulsor blast took out two legs from one of the things as it started to go up along the wall to try to get to Steve from up high, and in almost the same breath Steve was yelling something, and all Tony got was a flash as Steve’s shield whipped by his head, taking out another one that had come up behind him and was already starting to scratch at his legs and unguarded hand.

“Motherfucker, I just repainted that,” Tony muttered, but there wasn’t any time to mourn right now because he had to turn, grab the shield and throw it back Steve’s way. “Let’s play catch!”

Steve didn’t need any more explanation, and half a second later when Tony shot a blast his way he already had the shield back against his arm and deflected the high energy beam right back at one of the two things still actively going. It smashed into an opposite wall and crumpled, and Tony followed up with two more quick shots that levelled the last one.

“Alright! We are so badass. Is it just me, or was that kind of fun?”

Steve, who was breathing fast but otherwise didn’t look particularly ruffled, shot Tony a look that he decided to take as agreement that Steve just didn’t want to admit to.

“Can you scan to see if there are any more coming? They went down easy, but I don’t want to have to fight my way through a swarm of those.”

Good question. Tony waited a second while JARVIS ran some numbers to identify anything unique about the energy signature, and then expanded the search to the nearby block and a half or so that he could pick up from the ground.

“…seems like they were a barbershop quartet. It there are more coming, they aren’t close yet.”

Steve nodded before carefully putting the shield over his shoulder and making sure it was once again affixed to the harness there. In spite of its extremely loud everything, Tony had to hand it to whoever had designed the latest version of the Captain America get up. The form-fitting, figure-hugging pants weren’t a bad touch either. Making his way over to where one of the weird creatures lay unmoving, Steve walked around it before crouching down to get a closer look.

“I don’t think this is an alien. Not saying it didn’t come from another place, but unless I’m further behind on technology than I think, I’m pretty sure living things don’t have wires like this.”

“What?” Walking over (alright, clanking over), Tony made his way to Steve’s side hurriedly.

The black body of the thing, where it had impacted the wall, was split open and leaking something dark from shiny, metallic insides. Something fizzled, like a shorted wire, and Tony whistled lowly under his breath.

“Creepy robots. Great.”

Steve glanced up with a slightly arched eyebrow.

“Thought you’d be excited about it.”

“Normally you’d be right. But I don’t have the time, or the resources to take this thing apart properly, not unless you think our day would be better spent doing a robot autopsy.”

Steve considered for a moment before reaching down and touching one of the bent, strangely metallic legs. His gloved hand then moved up, testing to see if he could pull the crushed body further apart. It gave a little, and Tony watched with interest to see where this was going. After a moment, Steve stopped and thought again.

“Maybe if we take a few parts with us? You could take a look tonight. We need clues, and this might be a pretty big one.”

“Yeah, I got this.”

Bending down to pick up one largely dislocated leg, Tony raised it and promptly broke the thing into three different pieces. The metal was surprisingly hard and brittle, but it came apart with a little elbow grease. Tossing the razor-tipped end away as well as the more damaged segment, Tony handed over the middle joint to Steve.

“Here. Courting gift for the man-purse.”

“Shut the hell up, Stark,” Steve informed him with weary almost-amusement as he accepted the bit of evil robot and then promptly fit it into his bag.

“Not super likely. Now, grocery shopping?”

*   *   *   *   *

There actually was something of a grocery store left. Not much, but some, and that was enough for the time being. Of the section that hadn’t been obliterated, there was still a humorously intact shelf stocked with pickles, tinned soup, and marshmallows of all things. Helmet under one arm, Tony strolled back out onto the not-a-street-anymore as he tossed some colourful marshmallows into his mouth with – mostly – unerring aim. He was nine for ten until Steve threw a bottle of water at him.

“Rude as hell, Rogers.”

“Courting gift from the man-purse. By the way, I don’t think you should keep the sun-glasses.”

Tony scoffed, and tipped them down to look at Steve disapprovingly.

“What’s wrong with them?”

“Hello Kitty’s kind of dated,” Steve replied with something like an actual smirk, and holy hell Captain America just made a joke about something being dated.

“Timeless is the word you’re looking for. Now stop having bad fashion sense, and help me look around for anything else that could be useful.”

A screwdriver or a pocket knife would be ideal, but he’d settle for anything with a sharp, hard edge right now. From the aerial view it looked like a few floors of the Baxter Building were still standing, but there was no telling whether the inside was burned out or not. Assembling a make-shift tool kit would make a lot of things easier down the line, especially if they were going to be fighting anymore baddies.

“I meant to ask…” Steve started, as he walked over and looked around the street. “If those things were robots, or something like, then how did one of them bleed on my shield?”

“Didn’t,” Tony replied, deciding to eat another couple of marshmallows. “That was me.”

“What? When?” Steve asked, turning to look at him with a decided frown. Although that was one of his favourite expressions, it really didn’t do him any favours.

In answer Tony just held up the suit’s gloved hand to demonstrate the thin cut running across the gauntlet. He’d been impressed, too. Something that could cut through titanium-alloy like it was a tin can wasn’t really a common-place, and probably shouldn’t be fucked with too lightly.

“It’s just a flesh wound, no big deal. But if we meet anymore new friends, I’d suggest staying away from the pointy bits.”

Steve nodded, silent for a moment before walking across to the blown out windows of a little shop that had been on the other side of a street just two days ago. Glass was littered everywhere, glass and cigarettes and coins and bricks and paper. A bent and twisted newspaper box that had been blown here from somewhere else lay on its side, the incorrect date staring up at the sky while a lone remaining parking meter in a sea of rubble blinked **2:09** repeatedly.

Tony looked across at it all, and decided no, this wasn’t how things were going to be.

“But it was kind of fun, right? I’m not wrong.”

Steve looked up, evidently also tugged back into the present moment, and after a beat he almost smiled.

“Maybe a little. The smashing part.”

Walking over, Tony scoffed.

“A little. Doesn’t like my sunglasses. Rogers, if you’re going to be my road trip buddy then you need to get into the spirit of the thing.”

This time there wasn’t any mistaking the smile although it came with its own inherent challenge. Anyone who didn’t believe Steve Rogers was a saucy asshole had never met the man.

“Yeah? What kind of spirit is that? Right now all I’m getting from you is school-girl.”

“I’ll have you know that pink sunglasses are manly. That’s why no one wears them, not enough testosterone. You know what I think would help?”

“What’s that?” Steve asked, a cautiously amused edge to his voice.

“You need… aviators, or something like. Oh, hey, this’ll do.” Ducking under the crumbling window frame, Tony disappeared into the shadows for just a moment before re-emerging with a long beige scarf. Not waiting to let Steve tell him no, Tony just walked up and looped the thing around Steve’s neck as if that were a perfectly normal thing to do after everyone you knew and loved had just been murdered and you were standing in a post-apocalyptic wasteland that used to be New York.

So maybe he was a little giddy.

“What are you doing?” Steve asked dryly, as Tony finished fixing the way the scarf sat.

“Making you look pretty. Also, now you vaguely resemble the most patriotic pilot who ever lived, although I guess that’s fitting. You need to be prepared.”

“Prepared for what?”

“Flying.”

“What? Stark, I said no—”

By the time he’d finished, Tony already his free arm looped around Steve’s waist, and then they were no longer on the ground.

*   *   *   *   *

New York stretched out below them.

Sitting on top of a ruined beam, Steve’s expression didn’t give much away. The fires dotting the ruined city-scape were like beacons, with dark smoke billowing upwards in places, and orange flickering lights animating other distant boroughs. That, and other things. From up here they could see the dark shapes scattered across the sky, and the occasional streak of light through and against grey clouds that were inevitably followed by a distant blast.

And somehow, somehow in some way Tony would never understand, the remains of Stark Tower still stood as a silhouette. His eyes lingered on what had been his, unable to shake the thought that it looked like a corpse itself.

“Army, I think.”

Tony looked up. Steve’s eyes hadn’t moved from where they were pinned on a rocket flare far across the city.

“Probably.” He tried to follow Steve’s eyes and not let his own wander back to their previous trajectory, although it was a losing battle. Tony wondered vaguely where, if this hadn’t happened, Pepper would be today. Probably overseeing some patent applications, and dealing with a meeting that she should probably have delegated to someone else. It was almost funny how meaningless that seemed in retrospect.

“We should go help them.”

“And do what?” Tony asked, parroting back the question Steve had asked Natasha the night before.

“I don’t know, but something.”

“We are doing something, and it’s more important.”

Steve’s eyes finally flickered down to meet Tony’s, and Tony returned his gaze unflinchingly. He wouldn’t say he’d stared down better men than Captain America, but certainly more intimidating ones.

“We sure about this?”

“No, but when are we ever sure about anything? We didn’t know we could stop Loki, or take down that lunatic Thanos last year.”

There was a long silence, and Tony half expected Steve to try to argue with him. But then again, no one was as stubborn as the man sitting off to his right, who cut a very dashing figure against the gloom. Steve was just as deep in this as Tony was, and he knew it. When he finally answered again, it was with a wryness that Tony could appreciate and that gave him the push he maybe needed too.

“When we get back, I’m taking Sharon out and drinking the hardest thing I can get.”

“So Shirley Temples all around.”

“Wasn’t that you, as a kid? I’ve seen pictures, and the resemblance is uncanny.”

“Ha ha. Hilarious. I’m not blond. And when we get back, I’m going to throw the biggest fucking party you ever saw.”

“Pepper’ll like it.”

“No, she’ll hate it. So will you. But the invitation isn’t optional.”

Steve seemed to consider that before looking back out at the skyline one more time.

“It’s a date. In the meantime, though, we should get going.”

To the Baxter Building it was.

* * *

 

**07.04**

Reed Richards and Tony were, one could say, known to each other. _Knowing_ each other implied a voluntary sustained acquaintance, and liking each other was, well, simply not the case, but they did sort of circle each other at various conferences and academic functions. It wasn’t that Richards wasn’t worth getting to know; he was obviously brilliant and had quite a few ideas that Tony wouldn’t mind picking over. In fact, after reading Richards’ latest publication he’d been trying to arrange a meeting to discuss some of the theoretical technology the man had been postulating. It would have already happened if Richards hadn’t blown him off for a lunch date with some guy named Pym, which was further proof that Richards needed some proper schooling in priorities.

The thing was – and Tony could not underline this enough – that Reed Richards and his gang were, frankly, weird, and the man had this infuriating way of assuming he was smarter than you. Which was obviously a complete misfire in this case.

If pressed Tony would grudgingly admit that Richards and his little gang of tag-alongs had been of use during the Thanos war. The fact that they’d been able to get into orbit and monitor things from there was pretty impressive, if also slightly worrying. Tony wasn’t one to be able to talk about strange hobbies, but the finicky four took it in all new odd directions. One time, Tony had been talking to Johnny Storm, who had been blessed with the good looks of the group (alright, Sue Richards-nee-Storm wasn’t so hard on the eyes either, but was obviously a happily married woman with questionable taste), and had asked him what their boner for space was.

“It’s the moon,” Storm had just said rather smugly, as if that explained everything. “The fucking moon.” And really Tony hadn’t known how to argue with that.

His biggest consolation was that between various strategy meetings leading up to the whole Thanos thing, he’d managed to beat Richards in four out of five of their simultaneously ongoing chess matches. So, yeah, obviously smarter.

Fast forward a year and change, and the Baxter building was more like the Bonfire Building, now. It had never been much of a looker, because certain people didn’t have the clarity of vision to merge form and function, but now it was sort of like walking through a ghost town version of what had once been one of the most advanced laboratories in the country.

Most of the papers had been incinerated, or scattered so far and wide that trying to re-create their original order would have been a job for someone with a million years to spare. Some of the machines had survived, most of them from some kind of safe room near the ground floor, but everything from the fourth floor up was simply gone. Odds were that if there had been something to find here, some kind of explanation or solution, it was long gone.

“I haven’t got anything,” came Rogers’ voice from off behind Tony’s left shoulder, and he sounded like he was trying not to deflect his frustration and concern.

“So far I’ve got the prototype for some kind of floor refrigerator. I’ve got a good feeling that this could be it.”

Tony could pretty much hear Steve biting back on the irritated sigh. They could play nice, if they wanted, but it wouldn’t change the fact that they were looking for a needle in a haystack, and most of the haystack had been blown up, or thrown into an adjoining hay barn.

It was dark now, because it had taken more than a few hours to work their way through the streets and to the building. Laying low wasn’t really Tony’s thing, and he didn’t take naturally to it. That, on top of the fact that they’d essentially been sneaking their way through an active war zone, had made him jumpy, frayed his nerves, and made the throb at the back of his head return steadily. There was nothing to be done about any of the above, but now that they were playing at search and rescue, he didn’t have a lot of patience to pander to Captain Dour’s desire for a serious conversation about what was going to happen if this didn’t work.

Holding up the light (or in this case the left hand gauntlet of his suit), Tony approached a desk near the back of the crumbled room. Outside there was a low rumble, which he ignored completely as he gingerly stepped over a large chunk of concrete.

“It would help if we had even the slightest idea what we were looking for.”

There was a pause of silence, and a flash of light behind him as Steve apparently decided to investigate the other side of the room. That was one of the good and bad things about being stuck with Captain America of all people at the end of the world – he wasn’t really the give up sort, even in the dark when they had basically no hope in hell and could theoretically be blown up at any moment.

“What exactly was he working on that SHIELD was keeping tabs on him?”

Pausing to study a large, singed blueprint tacked down to the desktop, Tony traced one of the lines with his left index finger as he thought his way quickly through the design.

“…you ever hear of the multiple-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics?”

“Idea that everything exists somewhere, right?”

Vaguely impressed, Tony untacked the blueprint having realized there was something underneath.

“Sort of. More or less. It’s the theory that every possibility generates a new reality, and they all exist sort of like pages in an infinite book, except they’re all touching each other simultaneously and yet totally contained from one another.”

“And people think that could actually be true?”

“Could be. Makes as much or more sense than half the other concepts we think we’ve proven. Not to mention gods and magic.”

Notes. There were notes under the blueprint. Dozens of them, all written on yellow post-it notes and stuck across the desk’s surface in a patch-word quilt of someone trying to work of out the logic of something not quite graspable.

“So if I pick up this book, there’s a world where I don’t?”

“Theoretically. Though you’re thinking too small, Rogers.” Tony’s eyes scanned rapidly across the field of notes from left to right, mentally organizing, aligning, and building his own blueprint in a flurry of imaginary assembly. “If that were true, there’s also a world where I decided to become a mime artist and save the world with silent artistry.”

“Stark, I doubt there’s any universe anywhere where you could keep your mouth shut for longer than ten seconds.”

“Touché.” And then, after a beat Tony flipped back the blueprint and stared at it again for a second before murmuring under his breath, “son of a bitch.”

“You say something?” Steve asked, and the light flashed again in Tony’s field of vision.

“I think he was trying to build something that could look between worlds.”

There was the sound of footsteps, and then a faint warmth that signalled Rogers was standing right behind him, to the left. Adjusting the light, Tony leaned over the blue print and ran his hand over it before starting to point out the relevant details.

“Look at this. Does it look like a door to you?”

“Looks sort of like he was building a gate,” Steve replied politely, the skepticism thinly veiled.

“No, more like a window. A gate you can walk through, and it opens both ways. That’s dangerous. This… I’m missing too much information. But I’m willing to bet it’s a window. What if you could see every possibility? See how things might have been different, or use it to see what the best outcome is for a choice you have to make?”

“You could do a lot of things,” Steve replied shortly, and that pretty much summed it up. Tony frowned as he stood back.

“I hate this guy.”

“Why, because he might have caused what’s happening?”

“No, because he thought of this and I didn’t.”

“Considering, you might not want the credit.”

Although upon further reflection, there was a chilling possibility under there. If - and this was a big if but it deserved consideration – the data had been right and not just distorted and the time frame on the anomaly had been thirty years in the future… well. Tony had been trying to meet with Richards to arrange a little get together. He’d wanted this stuff. Wanted it enough to willingly sit down and talk to the space nerd and his friends, and who was to say that Richards hadn’t been kind enough to gloat by sharing?

Fuck.

“Give me the leg.”

“What?” Steve asked, his own light jostling slightly. Tony turned to face him, and there was a note of command in his voice that he didn’t usually try on Steve, because it would generally be met with the same.

“Give me. The leg.”

Steve’s eyes scanned Tony’s face rapidly, and then his hand holding the other glove from the suit dropped, and he started to pick through his over-full bag. It took a few moments for him to move things enough that he could find the twisted bit of metal at the bottom, but finally he extracted it before handing the thing over. Tony took it without thanks, and immediately set it on top of the desk.

“Stand back.”

“Why?” Steve asked, but he was stepping back even as he asked the question, and it was for the best because Tony didn’t waste any time in taking the nearest blunt, heavy object (a piece of piping that had come loose from the overhead ducts) and smashing it into the cracking center of the leg segment. “Stark, what the hell?” Steve bit out, but Tony ignored him as he swung at it again, this time cracking the thing right open.

“Looking for credit,” he told Steve shortly, before holding up the light again and starting to pick through the pieces.

Heavy silence hung over them, punctuated by the sounds of Tony’s exploration. It was hard to do any quality reverse engineering here and now, but all he wanted right this second was to see if any of the signature markers- no. No. Interesting, but no. Starting to laugh quietly, Tony pulled free a bit of wire and circuitry and examined it closely before grinning mostly to himself.

“…the good news is it wasn’t me. Whoever built these thinks in a way that… I don’t understand, not without looking more closely. But I’d never build anything with this much redundancy.”

Steve exhaled a breath, and Tony glanced back at him before putting the bits of broken machinery back down.

“You thought that was a serious possibility?”

“I’m really into the first law of robotics, but you never know.”

Rogers scanned his face for a second as if he were trying to decide what to say, and it seemed that whatever he landed on, it left him shelving several other possibilities. Maybe in a different world Steve Rogers was saying something else entirely.

“Now we know it wasn’t you. Should we be looking for anything else, or are we done here?”

“I’d like to know why Arizona, but at least now we have a shell casing. It’s no smoking gun, but it’s better than nothing.”

Steve turned, and he raised his light as he swept it around the remains of the room once more. Different crippled, crumpled gadgets lay strewn here and there, and a sheared off bit of wall revealed yet another series of halls and dark rooms leading further back.

“What if it wasn’t all theory?” Steve asked, and this time it was Tony scrutinising the other man’s face, looking for clues.

“Clarify.”

“You said a gate goes both ways, but so does a window. If you can look through from one side, someone else can look through from the other.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and he turned his head to follow the sweep of Steve’s beam as he thought through the implications.

“What you’re saying is, that even if the window isn’t here, now, it’s still here.”

“Hey, in some world you’re a mime. What do I know?”

Taking a deep breath, Tony gave Steve one more critical look before returning back to the desk.

“Use that hand to give me a hand, and for once that’s not a euphemism,” Tony said as he rapidly took the blueprint, lifted it and turned it over. Helpfully, Steve turned the light his way, and Tony started opening and closing desk drawers as he searched around for anything like a writing utensil. Apparently luck – if anything at this point could be considered lucky – was on his side, because in the third drawer down he actually found a pen.

Standing straight again, Tony bent over the desk before starting write in a quick, neat hand: _Stop this. Build something to protect them._ Simple, and to the point. Although, after a moment, he scribbled down another note just below and underlined it. _Fight fire with fire._ _Build the ultimate electronic defence system._ Putting down the pen, he lifted the remains of the destroyed robotic limb and used them as a paperweight that was also heavy with dramatic import. That would be funny, except it wasn’t.

Steve didn’t say much of anything, although his eyes traced over the paper. There wasn’t much to say or do here, now, so really the question then became the same as it had been before: what next?

“I think it’d be safer to stay here for the night,” Steve filled in, as Tony stepped back away from the desk and what he’d both found and left there.

“Probably. I can see in the dark, but keeping both of us safe will be harder.”

“We’ll leave at first light, then. For now, let’s try to find a safe spot.”

“Oh, camping. I’ve never liked camping.”

As they moved through the darkness and the back end of the room, past the twisted remains of something that had once looked a little like a door, a broken digital clock face lying on the ground stared up with a faint light while the minutes flickered for a half second before ticking forward to [**11:11**](http://i.imgur.com/I2LpHA7.png) and then going out completely.

*   *   *   *   *

“I feel like we should have a hobo fire.”

“Stark.”

“What, not PC enough? Would you prefer housing-impaired? Technically we’re housing impaired, so it really would be a hobo fire.”

Steve snorted something like a laugh, and then lapsed back into the silence that had previously filled the small, dark room. Deciding to try to save power from the suit, Tony had filched what seemed to be a still-functioning lava lamp from a nearby office (probably had been Grimm’s, it was tacky enough), and set it up in their designated safe spot. The goal was to be as quiet and hard to locate as possible, because drawing attention would probably equate to instant obliteration in this particular case.

The flickering orange and green light from the shitty lamp was just enough to pick out Steve’s features from where he was sitting nearby, leaning against a wall with one leg drawn up and the other extended. If he’d looked tired before, he now looked like an unusually attractive zombie who’d been cursed with a decidedly unattractive colour palette.

“You should try to get some sleep. I’ll sit up, just in case.”

“Not sure there’s a point in trying,” Steve responded, and his eyes moved from the lamp to Tony. For some reason that was vaguely disconcerting, although Tony couldn’t pinpoint exactly why for the life of him.

“You’ll never know unless you try, etcetera etcetera.”

“How’s your head?”

“Disarmingly handsome, and slightly sore.”

Steve nodded fractionally, and Tony drew up is own legs into a loosely crossed sort of position. Reaching for the bottle of water sitting nearby, he took a long drink before setting it down again and capping the thing. In case of further tremors or demolition, he didn’t want to lose his drink just because of poor forethought. The Iron Man suit stood off near the door, ready to go at a moment’s notice but mostly just looking like an imposing shadow at the moment. Steve had had to settle for undoing the zipper on the top of his suit to get more comfortable, but that was what you got for going the form-fitting route.

“You know, this mission seems a little crazy, even for you.”

“Why? I have the crazy credentials,” Tony replied easily enough, tipping his head back to rest against the wall. It was warm in here, but not unpleasantly so.

“You’re about building the future, not looking to the past.” There wasn’t any judgement in Steve’s tone, which was… nice.

“If we leave it like this, there is no future.”

“I know. I’ve lost a world before, but at least there was a new one waiting. This isn’t—”

“No, it’s not.”

There was another quiet moment before Steve pulled up his arm to rest on his knee.

“Makes you think, though. All the things you never did, all the chances you never took.”

“I’ll have Reed Richards look into it for you,” Tony deadpanned, and Steve laughed softly, eyes flickering across the room as if he were watching shadows.

“What about you, no regrets?”

Now there was a loaded question.

“Plenty. What if is a great question.”

“I keep thinking, what if I’d asked Sharon to marry me? Or, what if I’d taken her at her word and let it be over? Found my own place, met some new people. What if I tried drawing again, or went and saw the Eiffel tower when it wasn’t about to explode?”

Tony watched Steve carefully, his own eyes no doubt shadowed, and for that he was glad.

“What if I got my act together and actually had you and the others move into the tower? What if I’d punched Justin Hammer in the jaw? I regret not doing that.”

Steve laughed again, and this time it was a little more warmly. Tony smiled ever so faintly in response.

“If we get the chance, I’ll hold him and you can do the hitting.”

“You are a man after my own heart, Steve Rogers,” Tony replied, and his smile stretched just a little further. After a beat Steve asked the question Tony had been half expecting, but he was still sort of surprised to hear it from Steve’s mouth.

“You ever wonder what would have happened if, that night at the party, things had gone different?”

He didn’t need any more details to know which night Steve was referring to.

“Sometimes. If I’d been less drunk, and we hadn’t had to deal with a terrorist cell deciding to blow everyone up a quarter after midnight?”

“I was more thinking the part where I didn’t sleep with you.”

This time it was Tony who laughed, and he let his hands play over the hem of one of his pant legs.

“It might have been fun, for a while.”

“You weren’t over Pepper.”

“Coming from you, that’s kind of funny.”

Steve didn’t so much answer as incline his head with an acknowledging smile. Tony pressed his lips together before closing his eyes for a moment.

“Maybe in another world we hooked up and it was epic.”

“In another world you probably married Hammer.”

“Fuck off, in another world YOU probably married Hammer.”

“There can’t be that many worlds.”

Tony laughed again, and another silence descended over the room. Cracking open his eyes, Tony looked over to find Steve watching him too, and so they stayed for a little while, with no words to fill in the gaps. When Steve finally did relent and lay back to try to catch an hour or two of sleep, Tony sat up through the dark hours and found that at least, at the end, he was glad not to be alone.

* * *

 

 

**06.05**

“So what do you think, Captain? How do we get to Arizona?”

“If we can find one, we steal a car.”

“Repossess a car, Steve. And that was my suggestion, you are stealing my suggestion.”

“Repossessing. You can think about the difference in the passenger’s seat.”

*   *   *   *   *

New York wasn’t New York anymore. That much was clear. The light of dawn on the third day after the attack didn’t bring any miraculous solutions, didn’t change anything. On street level, Tony stood in the middle of what had once been 5th Avenue and watched the sun come up over a jagged skyline where smoke was still twining through the sky in places, and an oppressive stillness hung over everything. It caught at him, for a moment, because he knew – he _knew_ – that there should be people walking by him right now, because New York was never quiet, not even at five in the morning. Taxis should be shuttling past, with people in suits and ties jockeying to grab the first one. There should be coffee shops already busy with the early morning rush, and other things starting to light up as the city prepared for the day.

It should just be waking up, and instead he was standing in a dead zone, and today the difference was crows. Steve had spotted them first, but after a little while it was hard to miss them. They came in ones and twos, and then they seemed to start arriving in flocks, black clouds coming down to collect the garbage and the carrion. It wasn’t exactly like they were experiencing cold weather, and the smell was starting to collect in the air, making everything heavy and faintly nauseating.

And people used to say the neighbourhood had gone to hell. On the bright side, at least he and Rogers weren’t planning to buy a timeshare on an apartment here, so there wasn’t much point in sticking around to think about how many tons of dirt it’d take to bury all the people in New York City. (Answer: it didn’t matter. It had to not matter.)

There were still a few ships hovering high overhead that tempted Tony almost unbearably – he wanted so badly to just go, go and rip them apart and say this is what you get for fucking with me and what’s mine. He wanted to, but for everyone’s sake, for the sake of all these dead people who shouldn’t, couldn’t be dead, he couldn’t afford to take that liberty. There were no more explosions, no more cannons or guns, not this morning, so it was probably safe to say that the army had lost its last stand here. Practically-speaking, it made it easier to make their way up and off the island - travel was much faster than the day before - but it still required some ducking and weaving. There weren’t just spiders out in the streets today; today there were other things, tall things with long legs, and extended, close to the ground things that moved in ways that shouldn’t be naturally possible.

It was mostly thanks to Steve’s uncanny knowledge of back alleyways and JARVIS’ persistent pointing them in the right direction that they made it to their next stop without any major engagements. Crossing the Hudson was a bit of an event, and Steve had to grin and bear another short flight, but since the other option was getting his feet more than a little wet, he didn’t put up too much of a fight.

The destination in question was the old house of one of Tony’s business rivals, a man he had no particular love for but whose sprawling Union City house he’d been to more than once. It was gone too, obviously, the trappings and luxuries that money had bought during life of no real significance now. Well, at least not the ones above ground.

What he was interested in now was what was under the house’s ground floor. It took some time to find the hidden garage entrance, but between him and Steve (who showed admirable initiative when he just broke a hole in the wall by the lock) it wasn’t difficult to get inside.

Security. You never got what you paid for.

“You saying we can take whichever one of these we like?” Steve asked after a low whistle as he walked around the garage while Tony provided some light.

“I’d suggest picking one with a lot of horse-power and good gas mileage, but if you want a vintage VW beetle we can look somewhere else.”

Apparently Steve’s love of stupid old things didn’t extend much to cars, though, because not thirty seconds later he was standing over a dark red Ferrari convertible, hand hovering over the hood almost as if he were giving the thing its due reverence. He’d shown the appropriate appreciation for Tony’s stable of cars, but it wasn’t exactly like they hung out a lot outside of Avengers business so there’d never really been an opportunity to properly show off his collection. Maybe next time around. He’d get it right on the retry.

“I like the colour,” Tony commented, which seemed to snap Steve out of his car-lust haze long enough for him to turn towards Tony with something like a guilty expression.

“Sorry. I’ve seen the specs on cars like these, and it’s something else.”

“Don’t be sorry, you should always properly appreciate pretty things. So, you wanna steal it?”

Steve pretended to consider for a moment, as if the answer wasn’t already a given. After a beat, though, he couldn’t stop the grin that made him look almost boyish for a moment.

“Yeah. Yeah, I wanna steal it. If you can open a door I can hot-wire.”

“Rogers I am scandalized and slightly turned on. Done deal.”

Making his way over to the car, Tony crouched down painstakingly so that JARVIS could get a better read on the lock. He didn’t imagine he’d be able to open it without breaking it, but a contained break would be better than accidentally putting a hole in the door. It might give Steve a nervous breakdown, for one.

“I have calculated the requisite force, sir,” JARVIS informed him, and Tony brought up his arm and slid back the plate that concealed a small laser for precision work. It had come in handy more than once.

The lock sizzled and cracked under the beam, and Tony stopped the instant it started to look like he was hurting the paint job, but it turned out to be a good call because when Steve tested the door it opened easily. After that he let Steve do some black magic while Tony went around to the other side and to see if he could hook up his communicator to the car’s bluetooth. It didn’t take long, because he was a genius, so by the time Steve had the car started and ready to roll, Tony was already lounging in the passenger’s side, helmet on the floor as he watched Steve with a grin.

“Get in loser, we’re going shopping.”

“No we’re not—”

“It’s a pop culture reference, forget it. I’ll make you watch _Mean Girls_ another time. For now, let’s see about taking this baby for a spin, why don’t we?”

“I’d like to see you try and stop me,” Steve answered with a flash of that same grin, the one that sometimes made Tony forget that Steve was a bossy jerk-face.

Two minutes later there was a dark red Ferrari spinning rims as they bumped out of the garage and through the surrounding debris. One of the other reasons Tony had opted to do his car thieving from this particular asshole’s estate was because it was near enough major arteries and far enough from significant urban buildings that the chances of actually being able to get a car through were high. At least, higher than some of the other options. JARVIS was once again a saving grace, being able to use the satellite camera footage to act as both GPS and scout for major blockages and impassible channels.

As they pushed through minor wreckage with Steve wincing every time something dinged against the car’s fenders or wheel wells, Tony leaned back, one arm propped up on the bottom of the window, and watched New York as they carefully and painstakingly left it behind. It felt a little like looking at a graveyard, and for the briefest moment he was reminded of being seventeen and standing under an apple tree as two black coffins were lowered into dark, damp earth and someone read something meaningless from a Bible.

When they turned a corner that took the city out of his direct line of sight, Tony found himself holding his breath while grey skies rolled out before them.

*   *   *   *   *

“What’s your status?” Steve asked, eyes carefully on the road. Several frustrating hours and not enough miles later, they were somewhere south of Bridgewater.

“Could be better, but holding in,” Clint replied over the car’s speakers, voice clearer after Tony had finished adjusting the communicator. “We’ve evacuated the survivors and set up a base camp near Whistler, up in the Great White North. The mountains are giving us some cover.”

“How many people you find?” Tony asked, curious but not expecting much.

“Fifty or so. You guys find anyone else? We might be able to send a pick-up team.”

“Negative.” Steve’s voice was steady, and he turned the wheel to avoid another car that had been dashed across the road. “None so far, although I wouldn’t be surprised if there are clusters in the smaller towns.”

“If we can spare the people we’ll try to get to them,” Clint promised. “We think we found Banner, but there’s no way to retrieve him.”

“Where?” Tony asked, leaning forward a little.

“Word is there’s someone tearing up the southern part of Russia, and I’d be willing to lay my money on him.”

“Hundred bucks,” Tony quickly threw back, getting a quick flicker of eyes his way from Steve. Whatever, wasn’t like it mattered now.

“A hundred? Come on, Stark. Let’s say a hundred million.”

“Sure, why not?” Sitting back again, Tony shook his head. “I’m excited to see you try to collect.”

“Focus, please,” Steve cut in, and Tony exhaled a laugh that wasn’t really that good-humoured. “Clint, so far as we’ve been able to tell, they’re robots.”

“Yeah, we’ve figured that out too. No one’s found anything actually alive yet.”

“Either something with a brain or a lot like one is controlling them. Either way we’re headed west. If the centre is in Arizona, then we’re going to find it.”

“Get in touch tomorrow morning. We’re trying to barricade up the town before we make any more moves.”

“Will do, Hawkeye.”

“Oh, and Stark?” Clint asked, and Tony raised an eyebrow. “I don’t want a cheque. I expect cold, hard cash.” And then he was gone, and once again it was Tony and Steve, Iron Man and Captain America, and a whole country to cross before they reached the end of the line, one way or another.

Exhaling in an audible sort of sigh, Steve glanced Tony’s way again, just as quick and over even faster.

“Even if we change off driving, we’re going to need to stop for gas and to find more food and water. Any ideas on which way we should head to maximize our chances?”

Tony shrugged a little. “My vote goes to anywhere with running water. After being in a tin can for the best part of a few days, I am dreaming of a shower.”

“Sounds like rural’s our best bet, then. JARVIS, you think you can find us somewhere where we might be able to find gas, and Tony can try to stop smelling like a bucket of rust?”

“My pleasure, Captain,” the AI responded almost at once, and as before his voice was like a comfortingly familiar blanket to Tony, who smiled slightly. As Steve pulled off road to detour around a pile-up and a lot of blasted pavement, Tony listened to the wind as he waited for JARVIS to come back. Didn’t take long.

“As far as I can ascertain, it seems as though a suitable choice would be Hopewell, in Pennsylvania. A few buildings in the town remain standing, and several private residences outside of the town appear entirely intact. I’ve also detected signs of one or more survivors, although it is difficult to gauge their number or makeup. If you follow my directions, it is likely that you can arrive at the town before running out of gas entirely.”

“You are so much hotter than Google maps,” Tony informed JARVIS with a note of pride. “If she doesn’t want to date you then she’s crazy.”

“You’re too kind, sir,” the AI replied dryly, and Tony laughed quietly in response. At the same time, a chartered route through the back roads that would take them to Pennsylvania lit up the car’s dashboard screen.

Steve looked vaguely heartened by having a specific point to head for, not to mention confirmation that there were still other people out there, and that wonderful, annoying look of determination replaced the not quite nameable expression that had been there before. It was reassuring, and helped settle the creeping anxiety that had been starting to form in the pit of Tony’s stomach, so he leaned his head back against the headrest before looking back out the window.

“Hey, JARVIS, one more thing. You wanna give us a little road trip music?”

“Of course. I apologize for not having thought of that myself.”

And then _Highway to Hell_ was blaring over the speakers, and Tony grinned freely as Steve actually breathed a laugh beside him, and then rolled down his own window the rest of the way. Turning back onto a clear stretch of road, Steve reached for the gas pedal and then the miles started to disappear behind them in earnest and a red car streaked into the gloom.

*   *   *   *   *

Hopewell, Pennsylvania wasn’t much to look at, but the fact that there was anything to look at at all sort of made it like an oasis in the desert. Parts of it had been flattened, but compared to the devastation of other areas, and the memory of what New York had looked like as they left it, Tony had to admit that this was basically a bustling urban hub. It had a grand total of like… two streets, and there didn’t seem to be much of anything besides a miniature golf course and a few corner stores, but right at that moment it was about the best thing he’d ever seen.

“We check the church first,” Steve murmured from beside him as Tony fitted his helmet back on, and waited for JARVIS to get up to speed on the new situation. The first priority was to locate survivors, make sure they were in a safe spot that could hold out until a team could come and get them, and then he and Steve would get what they needed and get rolling again.

The church was the most obvious candidate, as it was the largest building still fully erect and only partially burned. If Tony were going to try to hide two hundred some-odd people, that’s probably where he’d pick too.

“You go first,” he suggested to Steve, gesturing slightly. “They’re more likely to appreciate Captain America walking through the door then someone who looks a little like a robot himself.”

“You might be right,” Steve answered, although he still reached for his shield before moving towards the front entrance.

Tony half expected the door to be barricaded, and the fact that it wasn’t worried him for all of one second until he promptly discovered the reason why it wasn’t. The reason being several men and women, all standing in the pews with various guns and rifles all pointing directly at Steve, who immediately put both hands in the air. From behind him, Tony belatedly did the same.

“Stay right where you are,” a woman told them flatly, the aim of the barrel of her rifle not wavering even slightly.

“I’m not moving,” Steve told her with really admirable calm as he looked from one terrified towns-person to another. “We’re here to help.”

“Little late,” shot back another man, who looked distinctly wild-eyed. “How do we know you aren’t one a’them in disguise or something?”

“We aren’t,” Steve answered simply. “And I’m sorry we didn’t get here faster. But if you trust me, we might be able to get you out of here and to somewhere safe.”

Leave it to Rogers to apologize for not being in the middle of actual nowhere when the world ended. Then again, seeing as how two of the locals had lowered their weapons, maybe Tony should just leave the talking to Steve. The woman who’d spoken first was the last one still holding a weapon pointed at them, and she continued to watch them with the same sharpness as she had when the door had first opened.

“How exactly are you going to do that, Mister Captain America?”

“You should get everyone underground, if you can. Some of our friends still have working transportation, and we can arrange for them to come pick you up and take you to somewhere safer.”

“I saw the news before it all went black, there’s nowhere safe.”

“Claire—” one of the others started, but Steve quickly shook his head.

“No, she’s right. But if we don’t try then it won’t be long before they coming looking here, too.”

There was a long silence before the woman – Claire – finally lowered the barrel of the rifle. Tony let go of the breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, although Steve just looked like he’d known she would all along. He probably had. Steve stepped aside slightly to let Iron Man step into the church proper too, and Tony quickly scanned the room, trying to discern how many people were in here. Looked like some thirty, or so.

“Is this everyone?” he asked.

“Everyone else tried to run,” one of the three men answered, one with dark hair and light eyes. “You… know if they made it?”

“I don’t,” Tony answered, because there was no point in sugar-coating it. He could still try to be kind, though, and didn’t add the ‘I doubt it’ on the tip of his tongue. “They might have found shelter, but we need to focus on this group first. Do you have enough food and water to stay low for another day or two?”

“We do,” Claire answered, and she gave him a long, speculative look. “Brought things from Gerry’s, when it was dark. We can probably hold out for another three or four days, if we’re careful.”

“Good,” Steve answered, and he still sounded like he knew everything was going to be fine. Tony himself almost believed it. “We can stay with you until help comes, but then we have to keep moving, look for others. Do you have gas?”

“Yeah, although you’ll have to go get it yourselves. You really gonna stay here? Think you can keep us safe?”

“It’s our job to try, ma’am,” Steve answered and Tony didn’t even bother to argue. There wasn’t any point.

“If we’re going to be here a couple of days, then I hope I at least get that shower,” was his only comment, and Steve’s mouth twitched like he almost wanted to smile but wasn’t going to.

The other woman, who was younger, probably still a teenager, looked from the others to Steve and then back again.

“We can make room for them here, can’t we?” she asked, sounding almost hopeful. The lure of any chance at all for safety was probably irresistible at this point, and Tony knew that if Steve hadn’t offered to stay, he probably would have done so, as much as he would’ve hated himself for it.

“We can,” Claire confirmed, although she held Steve’s eyes as she did. “If Captain America and Iron Man want to be our honour guard, then they’re welcome. But if you want to clean up, your best bet is to head up the road. Adam and Gail’s place was still standing, last I saw, and they’re on a well so you can probably get some water running.”

“Thank you,” Steve told her seriously, before turning to look at Tony. “We can take turns. If you go up first, I’ll stay here and keep watch.”

There was a filter of low laughter from Claire, who just shook her head.

“We were fine until you got here, and we’ll likely be fine until you get back. If not, well, then it probably makes no difference and God help us all.”

Steve still looked torn, but Tony understood. They wanted time to discuss and regroup, and having two semi-mythical celebrities-slash-superheroes from TV hanging around like that was going to make any difference when the end came here too…? Not going to lend any comfort to anyone, not right away.

“C’mon, Cap. I’m not the only one who could use a shower. I didn’t want to say anything but you’re starting to smell not so charming yourself.”

After a slow beat, Steve nodded.

“Alright. Can you tell us which way to head?”

“Go north, up the hill and to the right. There’s a dirt road that heads up that way, and it’s only a ten minute walk.”

“Good. We’ll be back.”

The woman gave a semi-ironic salute, and Tony decided then and there that he liked her. Hopefully, in some other world, she was making someone-who-deserved-it’s life a living hell.

The trek up to the house wasn’t too bad, although they tried to stay under cover as they went. There’d been an almost suspicious lack of activity in the skies or on the ground as they drove, but there wasn’t any use tempting fate. It seemed like wherever the invading parties were, whatever they were doing, it was focused somewhere else for the time being. And maybe that was a good sign – maybe Barton and Romanoff’s little team was actually accomplishing something, or maybe someone somewhere else had found some kind of weapon big enough to be a real threat. Hell, maybe that weapon was Banner.

There was no way to know, so Tony concentrated on the immediate future, which currently included the very real possibility of working plumbing. Steve seemed sort of lost in his own thoughts, and Tony was content to leave him that way for now, although he’d do what he could to draw him out after, if need be. First things were first, though, and Tony had his priorities straight.

The building was like an old farm house that had been mostly renovated, and partially modernized (depending on your definition of modern), and the door was not only unlocked but hanging open. The old wooden floors squeaked underfoot and the small living room was decorated with familiar touches, like someone had just been here and would be back any moment. A hideous blue ceramic cat sat on a windowsill, and a sewing machine was sitting on a nearby table with a length of green fabric beside it. It was – or had been – someone’s home so obviously that it felt almost wrong to be walking through it so casually, but as the light was starting to fade outside as early evening set in, Tony was too tired to give it too much weight.

“Should check the kitchen,” he told Steve briefly. “We can probably pack up the car with what’s here, and if God does feel like helping us, there will even be alcohol.”

Steve nodded, although whatever he was turning over in his head didn’t so much as a miss a beat. Tony shrugged before looking upstairs.

“I’m going to go clean up. I’ll come find you when I’m done.”

“Yeah, go on,” was Steve’s short reply, so Tony gave up on him for the moment and left to take the stairs up.

The armour coming off was like a small miracle all on its own, and as Tony stepped out of it he hissed in pleasure at the feel of actual air circulation. He’d never meant the thing to be worn for so long with so few breaks, and it was starting to make him achy and stiff with the inability to move completely freely.

“Stay,” he told the armour, leaving it in a corner of the bedroom with a faint pat on the head before going to investigate the bathroom.

Turned out it wasn’t much to write home about, but it was also exactly what Tony needed. Everything seemed to work and the shower did indeed run – the water was even warm. Must be a gas heater in the basement, and Tony silently gave a multitude of thanks for that as he ducked under the water stream and did his best to try to soak away the accumulation of sweat and grime. Running a hand through his hair, he decided that when he felt like he might maybe someday be clean again, he was going to see if Steve wanted to celebrate making it this far over a beer (if there was beer). Yeah, it was a good plan. Cap seemed like he needed to take a break, even if just for a moment.

Eventually, some long number of minutes later, Tony finally shut off the water and reached for a towel. Honestly he didn’t even give a shit if it was clean, he was too busy thinking about how much better and lighter he felt for the chance to take this one thing that should be a given, should be normal, and now was something he had to be grateful for. The world, this world, was a strange place and he didn’t have too much good to say about it. There really was nothing to hold onto except for the hope that this wasn’t all there was, and something was waiting at the end, in Arizona, that could somehow set it all right. And maybe that meant chasing a holy grail, but after all, wasn’t that what knights were for?

Back in the bedroom, Tony decided to follow Steve’s leave by raiding the drawers of the former resident. The bad news was that whoever lived here had not had stunningly good taste or (probably) that many options, but the good news was that they also hadn’t believed in plaid and had apparently been roughly his height and weight. Sucked to be Steve. Locating a pair of shapeless but otherwise inoffensive jeans, Tony pulled those on before finding a black t-shirt and deciding that would be fine, too.

He was pulling the shirt over his wet hair when Steve opened the door and stepped in, and then stopped immediately when he noticed Tony. Tugging the shirt down, Tony gave him an unrepentant half smile.

“What? If you can borrow, so can I.”

“Guess so,” Steve answered, expression briefly unreadable. Which Tony was getting tired of.

“They don’t seem to have anything in your size, since you’re a giant, so we may have to just Febreze your suit.”

“It dries in about an hour,” Steve returned, although a faint smile did grace his mouth. “Living in the future, huh?”

“Guess so. How are you making out?”

“Looking forward to a shower too, and maybe even some sleep. You must be tired.”

Bone-weary, in fact, having not slept more than an hour or two the night before, but it seemed like such a secondary concern. Tony shrugged.

“Mostly caffeine-withdrawal. Sleep is for the weak, and all that.”

“I’m not carrying you when you pass out. Again.” Steve walked over towards where Tony was standing. “What’s wrong with your hand?”

“What? Oh.” Tony glanced down at his palm which had an increasingly ugly red score down the left-hand side. “It’s just where the thing got me. Infection, probably, but it should be clean now so it’ll probably pass.”

“Probably,” Steve repeated with distinct skepticism. “Show me how bad.”

Rolling his eyes, Tony held out his hand in the dim bedroom, hoping there was enough light to satisfy Steve’s usual nosey curiosity. Apparently there wasn’t, because Steve stepped closer and caught his hand, examining it more thoroughly.

“This probably needs an anti-biotic. We’ll check to see if there’s a first-aid kit.”

“Gosh, Cap, you’d almost make a fella’ think you were concerned,” Tony teased, before retrieving his hand. “But really I’d be more worried about how we’re going to keep busy for three days or whatever. Think they have Yahtzee? Or maybe we should play Bingo, that’s a senior citizen game and more your speed.”

Steve laughed ever so slightly, and Tony took that as a small victory.

“How about poker? I bet I could take you to the cleaners.”

“Oh please, like Captain America has a good poker face.”

Steve was actually smiling now, eyes flickering from Tony’s away and then back again.

“I used to play with the Howling Commandos, and they gave no mercy.”

“And here I always thought that ‘war games’ was another expression for entertaining local ladies – and the occasional gentleman - in your barracks.”

“Well, there’s more than one way to keep entertained,” Steve replied, and now there was more than a trace of roguishness in that grin. Tony was mildly enthralled.

“Now this I want to hear all about.”

“It’s pretty simple. When you’re on the front lines, life seems pretty short so you’d find somebody to spend some time with, take ‘em somewhere quiet, and then break out the board games and play Parcheesi.”

Tony couldn’t help the laugh, not even if he’d wanted to.

“You are so full of shit.”

Reaching up to try to shove Steve back, he didn’t get far as Steve grabbed for his hand again to stop him and—

And then there was another voice in the room, and it was enough to startle both of them almost out of their skins. Tony turned on a dime, staring hard at the suit where the voice had come from, while Steve’s hands fell away almost instantly.

“Captain? Stark? Are you there?”

“Widow,” Steve answered first, surprise evident in his voice. They hadn’t been expecting to hear anything until 10 the next morning. “Everything alright? We’ve found a group of survivors that need transportation.”

“Well they may be waiting awhile,” Natasha’s voice replied flatly, oddly disembodied in the small, rapidly darkening bedroom. “We lost the town.”

“What happened?” Tony snapped out, eyes intense and fixed on the suit.

“They hit us, hundreds of them. I’ve lost contact with most of our other teams.”

“Are you alright?” Steve asked tersely, all the tension instantly back in his posture and voice.

“I am,” was all Natasha replied. “We’re retreating into the mountains. I’ll be in touch again if and when I can.”

“What about Barton?” Steve asked quickly, almost harshly. “Is he alright?”

The only answer was silence, and they stood for a long, heavy few minutes before it became clear that that was all there was going to be.

“Shit,” was all Tony could think to say as the shadows elongated and the heavy quiet suddenly felt thick enough that you could drown it. He stared at Steve and Steve stared right back.

* * *

 

 

**05.06**

“We don’t leave people behind. That’s not what we do.”

“We left people behind when we left New York.”

“That’s not the same as this.”

“Why, because you know some of their names?”

“That’s out of line, Stark. We are not just taking off on them into the night.”

“I wasn’t suggesting we do.”

“What are you saying, then?”

“We ask them.”

*   *   *   *   *

“Go.”

The word was out of her mouth before Tony had even finished laying out the situation. The woman didn’t even look ruffled, and Tony was seriously considering whether he should recommend her to SHIELD’s attention if the opportunity arose. Claire Whatever-Her-Last-Name-Was just looked at him steadily with that exact same ‘I know better than you and I’m kind of judging you’ face he got from Fury, Hill, Romanoff, and even Barton. She was basically already a natural.

“I’m not sure you completely understand,” Steve started, and he was wearing that same grey look he had been the night Tony had woken up in that shitty basement on the other side of the apocalypse.

“I understand fine,” Claire responded, and Tony arched an eyebrow at Steve. He had told him so, after all. “You can’t do anything for us and we can’t do anything for you, simple as that.”

“We might be able to keep you safe,” Steve disagreed, a little heat to his voice. At least he still had that argumentativeness in him.

“Maybe. For a while. But like your friend here said, what for? If there’s nowhere to go, and no one coming but… things to kill us, then we’re going to die either way. You’ll just be dying here with us.”

Tony wet his lips, shifting the helmet a little awkwardly.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen. But if we can find out what’s at the other end of the rainbow, metaphorically speaking, we have a better chance. We all have a better chance.”

Claire nodded, as if that made all the sense in the world.

“So get going.”

“With all due respect, ma’am,” Steve replied with more than steel in his voice, now. This time it was closer to a knife. “We’d be leaving you without much of a chance, and I’m not okay with that.”

“What _you_ don’t understand,” Claire answered, directing her own barbs back at Steve, “is that if you go, I can tell the rest that there’s some small ray of hope, that things might change. Even if it is a fairy-tale. If you stay they’re going to understand that we’re just waiting to die. A world with some hope is always better than a world with no hope, so pick your battles, Captain. Don’t pick them for other people.”

Fuck SHIELD. They’d missed out, and it was their loss. Tony would offer her a job himself. Pepper would love her. Hell, Pepper might propose marriage.

Steve’s jaw was tight and he looked a little like he wanted to punch someone, possibly Tony. Not that that was too unusual a state of affairs, but it’d make the rest of the trip a whole lot longer. But if that was how it had to be, then that was how it had to be. He’d just have to hope Steve would come around.

Claire escorted them out shortly thereafter, with directions to the gas station, and Steve walked ahead of Tony all the way there without saying anything or looking back. Tony was right, and he knew it, but it didn’t change the sick, angry feeling in his stomach when Steve still refused to say anything to him as they filled up the car and put the new supply of water and non-perishable food in the trunk. Because fuck Rogers, that was why. Tony now bitterly remembered why he and Steve tended to leave a lot of space between them when it wasn’t mandated otherwise.

“You drive,” Steve snapped coldly as he threw the keys to Tony, eyes as flinty and furious as Tony had ever seen them. “Since you’re the one who wants to leave so badly.”

Fine. If that’s how it was, then fucking fine.

Tony got into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition, having nothing whatsoever to say back as Steve joined him in the car while looking resolutely anywhere else. Putting the car in gear, Tony pulled out and tried to swallow around the faint taste of bitterness, fear and angry regret. As the town disappeared behind them and JARVIS silently lit up the screen with a map to the next likely place to stop, Tony tried to think of a way to tell Steve that he knew that he had personally just resigned a lot of people to their deaths. He knew.

When he glanced back in the rear-view mirror, the outline of the town already sort of looked like rubble.

*   *   *   *   *

They stopped in Ohio to steal gas from an over-turned oil tanker whose driver had clearly been dead for days. Morbid sort of road-side attraction, but that was the only sort there was to be had at this point. Tony supposed it couldn’t be all that different from giant pineapples or miniature carousels or whatever the surviving signs pointed the way to at every possible opportunity. He understood tourism and all that, but it seemed kind of ghoulish in its own sort of way. Or maybe it was just because no one was going to be visiting them anymore that it seemed that way? Who knew. It was possible he’d just read Gaiman too recently for these weird, empty places to seem anything less than haunted. If there had been gods out here, ones besides Thor, they were long gone now.

The opportunity to stretch his legs and take a piss was appreciated, because he didn’t ache any less for the extra hours in the car, or for knowing how many more were to come. Steve had made it clear that he was going to do the gas transfer (easy thanks to the pump that came conveniently equipped) and didn’t want any company, so Tony took the opportunity to take a stroll through the nearby field. The long canary grass was blowing in the wind, and the purple loosestrife came up past his knees in places as he walked, just appreciating how good it felt to not be sitting, and wearing armour. Sure it didn’t weigh that much – he was kind of awesome and had figured that one out ages ago – but after enough time, it was starting to become a real pain.

The question at the moment was what the hell to do about Steve. Or maybe it didn’t matter. They didn’t have to like each other. But the thought of going through this with no one else and no guarantee of success? Not that uplifting, not when the only person he had was happier to talk to the birds right now.

Although there were birds here, and they seemed to have a lot to say. Tony wasn’t that into touchy-feely nature crap, but standing in a field of wild grass and other miscellaneous weeds and flowers, it sort of simultaneously both felt good and also hurt to listen to the birds call to each other, and some bees buzz past as they chase each other into the brush.

Fucking Christ, everyone was dead, and the birds and the insects just kept right on going. He didn’t know if that was horribly, horribly unfair or if it was poetic justice. Maybe both. Either way it was sort of making his chest hurt in a way that was making it difficult to breathe. Fuck.

Bending over, Tony inhaled sharply before exhaling again, trying to get as much oxygen through his lungs as he could. Breathing was the trick, he’d learned that a while ago. Breathing and trying to think his way through to the other side, because if he could see the end then the pressure would ease up enough that he could make things happen. He really needed to see the other side. Okay. Breathe, and think.

Arizona. They’d get there, they’d punch some guy or some robot in the face, do some vaguely established time travelling, and bam, none of it would have happened. Simple as that. Except it helped a lot less this time, especially when laid out like that. But he really needed to not think that way, not ask too many questions, because if he did then he might as well just lay down and die now and if he did that then it was all for nothing. Everything, ever, for nothing. He wasn’t going to let anyone down, not Pepper, not Claire, and not Romanoff or Barton. He was going to even fucking prove to Rogers that this was what had to be done, and everything would be alright. He would, and that was how it was going to be.

Breathing became a little easier, finally, and he could suddenly hear the wind again, and realized the birds were still chatting. Things just kept going. Maybe instead of freaking out he should just take lessons.

The walk back to the car was uneventful, and he was surprised and wary to find Rogers leaning against the passenger side door, surveying him with a neutral, almost probing expression.

“You ready to go?”

“What, you talking to me again?” Tony replied more than a touch waspishly, and immediately regretted it.

Steve’s eyes turned frosty again almost instantly, and instead of answering he just turned, opened the car door, and got in more than a touch pointedly. Tony had to fight the urge to kick the nearest tire, hard.

“Didn’t think so,” he muttered instead, and tried to ignore the heaviness settling back against his chest.

Not a lot of options. Only choice was to go forward, and pray that in going forward he’d find the way back to fix all the mistakes.

*   *   *   *   *

The headlights threw weird shapes across the road as the gloom settled back in and the sun sank lower on the horizon, presumably. It was hard to tell since you couldn’t see it. The headlights, though, they were like long, extended ovals, but they changed and morphed as they passed over the winding back roads’ divots and cracks. Sometimes they had to detour through unpaved (to put it mildly) places to reach a different road or track, or just to avoid a particularly wide-spread swath of destruction. In the gathering dark, it was eerier that it was all just so… done. In some ways it’d be easier if killer robots were clambering their way across, beeping some ridiculous binary code for ‘kill ‘em all’; that Tony would actually know how to deal with. But the emptiness, the whole point finale vibe was more horrifying in a lot of ways, like the world had just come and gone, and he’d missed the punchline.

By **8:03** , according to the dashboard clock (although what that signified Tony was losing sense of) they were somewhere south of Indianapolis. There wasn’t much to see, because even though it was ostensibly summer and daylight hours were supposed to take up most of the day, it was already dark enough that it could be going on 10 or 11 and it’d seem about right.

Lights moved across the road and twisted, looking more like silhouettes of people now, if you thought about it closely. Although after a moment, it was more like a ghost, always sort of on the periphery of his vision before slipping just out of sight.

Time ticked by, and the gas tank ran steadily lower in a repeating cycle of terrible and quiet and lights over dark that were starting to seem more like fireflies, or maybe matches, liable to go out at any moment.

“Stark, you need to pull over.”

The voice startled him, and Tony blinked before frowning at Steve with eyes that actually hurt.

“Pull over,” Steve repeated, and although he was using his Cap voice, he also didn’t sound overtly hostile anymore. “You look like you’re going to keel over sideways, and I don’t think I can park the car if you do.”

Instead of arguing, Tony just pulled the goddamn car over. Headlights slashed across an abandoned laneway that looked like it led towards some devastated former industrial complex, and Tony sat for a moment as he contemplated that fact.

“Hey,” Steve said, and this time it was quieter, like there was no one else to hear them. Hilariously, there wasn’t. “Come on, switch seats with me. You haven’t slept in days.”

Somewhere between that and Tony concluding that Steve was probably right, the man was somehow at the driver’s side door, pulling it open and gently but insistently hauling Tony out.

“Shoulda’ said something,” Steve muttered as he led Tony around to the other side.

“Sorry, I thought we were playing the quiet game,” Tony had the wherewithal to snipe back, and for his trouble all he got was a breath and then a quiet laugh. It was impossible to tell at this stage whether that was a good thing or not.

Steve waited while Tony opened the passenger’s side and got in. Exhaling, he slid the seat back as far as he was able in a fucking coupe (whose idea had that been?) and leaned back without prompting. By the time Steve had gotten back into the driver’s side, and pulled them back out onto the road, Tony was already asleep.

*   *   *   *   *

Out of everything, all the possible things that could have done it, it was the quiet that woke Tony. The lack of movement, or the sound of the engine was subconsciously jarring enough that Tony blinked his eyes blearily, shifting and then immediately ruing the decision. His back was killing him from the idiotic angle he’d ended up in, leaning against the window with part of the door jabbing into his side. So, clearly, he’d really needed the sleep if he’d managed to doze through that.

Running a hand over his face, Tony noted Steve’s empty seat and the open car door before checking the dashboard clock. He’d only been out three hours or so, if he correctly recalled when he’d pulled over, but it was possible that he didn’t. Whatever the case, he needed some fresh air because he felt more hungover than that one time with the keg in his sophomore year.

Hand finding the door handle more by feel than sight, Tony pushed open the door and stumbled his way out into the night.

“Tony, what—?” Steve asked quickly, and Tony glanced up to find Steve giving him a look of something like concern, but also confusion.

“Oh good, this isn’t a slasher horror film,” Tony rasped before clearing his throat and frowning. He needed one of those bottles of water in the trunk. “I was hoping not because it’d be a rip off if I didn’t get to make out with someone in the car first.”

Steve didn’t answer right away, instead just watching him from where he was leaning against the side of the car. There was a gas can sitting near the back wheel, so it seemed like he had been doing all the useful work, and decided to catch a breather. Smart, probably. Tony decided to make good on his need of a drink, and tried to stretch out the kink in his back before walking by Steve to the back and popping the trunk.

“You want one?” he asked, holding up one of the water bottles, and after a beat Steve nodded and reached for it.

“…thanks.”

“No problem. That’ll be five bucks.”

“Settle for two fifty? I left my wallet in my other pants.”

Tony breathed a soft laugh before uncapping his water bottle and tipping it back eagerly. The water was like heaven on his dry throat, and he had downed half the bottle before he realized he should probably slow down.

Steve glanced at him one more time before looking back out into the dark.

“Would it sound weird if I said I really wished I had a cigarette right now?” Tony considered.

“Yes. Yes it would. But I’d kill someone for a bottle of whiskey right this second, so I guess we’re even.” Reaching up, he closed the trunk again before realizing for the first time that the faint sound he’d been hearing without realizing he was hearing was the murmur of crickets.

Walking around the car once more, Tony slumped back against the door beside Steve before taking another drink of water and deciding that he regretted nothing.

“Anything from Romanoff or Barton? Or anyone?”

Steve shook his head, and was quiet a moment before answering.

“Nothing. But it’s possible they don’t have much of a signal where they are. I bet whatever they’re doing right now, they’re probably giving someone hell.”

Reluctantly capping his bottle, Tony smiled crookedly.

“Probably.”

Crickets, quiet, and the dark.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said finally, and Tony had been expecting it but he still felt better for it. Turning his head towards Steve, he offered a quasi-smile that meant he got it.

“You should be. You hurt my feelings. My very delicate feelings that are like the fragile wings of a butterfly.”

“Knock it off, Tony,” Steve replied, annoyed but with that particular tone of ‘I hate that I think you’re funny’ he got only when Tony was involved.

“Seriously, Steve, it’s fine. You were trying to do the right thing.”

“Yeah I was. And we did the wrong one, but you were doing it for the right reason.”

Tony shrugged, still heavy and tired and kind of longing to get back in the passenger seat, even if it meant the door severed his spine and he never walked again.

“Sort of the story of my life.”

“Maybe I need that,” Steve said, and that was a weird one. Maybe Tony actually still was asleep, and this was just a weird dream where he was imagining that Steve Rogers said things validated Tony’s existence. “If it were just up to me, I’d probably have given up halfway through New York.”

“It’s because you can’t live without me. Think about me every waking moment, probably even dream about me.”

Steve rolled his eyes, but Tony could see the reluctant smile tugging at his mouth.

“You wish, Stark.”

“Probably. But here’s the deal, Steve, and for once I am not kidding.”

Steve looked back over, and Tony tried to figure out exactly how to word the things that were on the tip of his tongue, and that he was too tired to be able to dance around the way he normally would. Just saying it sort of seemed like the way to go.

“We’re going to save the fucking world, because that’s what we do. And maybe we’ll screw it up, because we’re kind of idiots sometimes, but we can’t accept that as a foregone conclusion. We decide we’re going to do it, and then we do it. Got it?”

“…yeah, I think I do.”

“Good. And for what it’s worth, I’m glad it’s you.”

When Steve answered after a pause, he sounded actually amused.

“I’ve gotta sleep deprive you more often. I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Don’t lie. The nicest thing I ever said to you was when I told you that your ass was hotter than—hey!”

As Steve pushed him over, Tony just laughed helplessly, and just like that the world was an ever- so-slightly less terrible place. Still ruined, of course, but as a very wise woman had once said – some hope would always be better than no hope.

* * *

 

 

**04.07**

Ten o’clock the next day came and went, and Barton and Romanoff didn’t get in touch. Not that they were always the most reliable of super spies, but for the first time, Tony began to believe that they might not hear from them again, at all. He wished he didn’t feel that way – he’d trade just about anything at this point to hear Barton’s annoying voice crackling over the air, thinking he was anywhere close to funny. Hell, Tony would actually hand over the hundred  million if it’d buy them a lecture from Romanoff, in that serious but dispassionate way she had when she actually meant it.

Instead what they got was radio silence, and neither Tony nor Steve could think of anything to say. State after state of no one and nothing but emptiness, wreckage, and waste. Illinois came and went, followed by Missouri, and there they had to pull up into another town in spite of both of their reservations.

Turned out they were worried about the wrong thing, though.

The smell came before anything else, because apparently heat and humidity exacerbated that kind of thing, and Steve had to stop before they got within striking distance because if he didn’t he was going to actually be ill. Tony, luckily or unluckily, had the benefit of a built-in air filtration system, so he got the privilege of walking through what could really only be described as a charnel house.

Whatever had been here hadn’t been quick, and hadn’t been kind. Surfaces were spattered in a dark, ominous brown that he didn’t need an interpreter to understand, and colourless faces with unseeing eyes and open mouths seemed to stare back at him from everywhere. Still, he might have made it through okay if he hadn’t happened upon a turkey vulture picking at a dismembered hand, lying in the middle of the road. At that point, the smell be damned, the faceplate had to go because if it didn’t he was going to vomit down the inside of the suit.

(The broken watch on the wrist had read **3:08** , and he could have almost sworn he saw gold nails.)

When he got back to the car, gas can in one hand and his helmet in the other, Steve looked him over carefully before reaching for the canister and just taking over the rest.

“What’d you do?”

“Only thing I could,” Tony answered, and there was no way to explain it so he didn’t try. Steve seemed to at least get it somewhat because he didn’t ask again, not even when they were in the car and the flames started to lick up distantly in their rear-view mirror as what had once probably been a nice little mid-western town burned down to the ground.

“No recriminations?” he couldn’t help but ask, glancing over.

“Viking burial. Thor’d like it,” Steve answered with a certain grim solemnity, and Tony studied his profile for a little before looking back out the front windshield.

“I’m going to kill them, just so you know. I’m going to find out who did this, and I don’t even care why anymore. I’m going to find them and I’m going to kill them and you aren’t going to stop me.”

“No, I’m not,” Steve agreed, and he drove for the next hour and a half until Tony stopped fidgeting, eyes looking out the rear-view mirror because he kept thinking he could still see the smoke.

*   *   *   *   *

“Where are they?”

“Taking out the main threats. Standard military tactic. Target the hostiles and cripple their offence and defence, and then sweep through to finish the job.”

“I wish they’d come already.”

“Don’t. We’ve still got a long way to go, and they’re not going to leave anything important unguarded.”

“I don’t plan on it either, so at least we’ll have that in common while I’m breaking their faces, or the closest thing to.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to save our luck until the end, if we can.”

“We’ll just have to see which one of us Lady Luck is favouring today.”

*   *   *   *   *

It happened fast, fast enough that neither of them knew it was coming until it was already on top of them, but maybe that shouldn’t have come as a surprise. In a heartbeat and a blinding, deafening flash they went from discussing the pros and cons of reality television (pro: six seasons of _Jersey Shore_ , con: six seasons of _Jersey Shore_ ) to scrambling for purchase as a rocket screamed through the sky, leaving the road cratered and impassible.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Tony swore as he grabbed for his helmet again. “I didn’t mean I wanted to find them right _now_!”

Steve didn’t even bother answering with ‘careful what you wish for you just might get it,’ or ‘I’m going to punch you in the mouth,’ but that was probably because he was too busy trying to make sure they didn’t drive directly into a crack in the road ten feet wide and who knew how many deep. Hauling right on the steering wheel, Steve clenched his teeth as wheels screeched against pavement and Tony tried to stay steady and get clear enough of the car to get up and airborne. By the time he actually caught sight of the ship overhead - as Steve drove off into some kind of muddy grassland - Tony had managed to get one foot under him on the seat, and, well, that was going to have to do.

“Sorry about the upholstery, Cap!” he yelled as loud as he was able before JARVIS was putting all power towards thrusters. And then with the best jump he could manage Tony was in the sky, dragging in a short, almost relieved breath as he did a quick loop-de-loop and then headed even further upward.

After any time spent away, the first ten seconds of flying were always a thrill right through his blood stream. They probably would be even if he was dying. He just sort of hoped he wasn’t about to test that hypothesis.

“Alright, motherfuckers,” Tony murmured lowly as he banked and then dove upwards into a cloud bank. “Show me where you are.”

“There are some on the ground.”

Steve’s voice patched through after a moment, quiet and then too loud as he self-evidently pulled up his cowl and adjusted the fit.

“I’m playing hide and seek up here, but let me take a look for you, shall I?”

“Pretty sure you owe me and Lady Luck a drink after this,” Steve gritted out in response, and Tony swept back down again, shaking clouds off in his wake.

“Anything you want. Tequila? Scotch? You strike me as a gin kind of guy, maybe neat.”

They were crawling out of the fields like huge black tarantulas, dark against dark and just as unpleasant to look at as you’d imagine.

“Wouldn’t mind some of Nat’s vodka,” Steve muttered after a second, as down below the car’s back wheels skidded, spun, smoked.

“Deal. You’ve got nine so far, six on your tail and three coming up on your right. Watch out for the big one that looks kind of like something out of Lovecraft, I have dibs on that guy.”

“I think you’ve got your own problems,” Steve told him, strain in his voice as the car started to move again, and Tony looked up fast. Seemed like Cap was right, as usual. Time to start taking out some of his aggression, Tony decided.

The first ship banked low, and heading straight for it, Tony almost missed the sound of the second missile coming in while his attention was diverted. Almost, but not quite.

“No, no. no. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, and I’m about to blow you the fuck up.”

Spinning fast, Tony dipped and then sped with everything he had right into the clouds while the shrill whistle of the oncoming projectile rattled in his ears and in his bones. JARVIS seemed to understand that it was sort of do or die here, so any extra power was diverted to the propulsion units as Tony did his best impression of someone attempting to break the sound barrier.

“Steve, call ‘em for me.”

“I can’t see where you are, Tony!”

“You’re going to have to try harder.”

“One of them’s not far from where you disappeared. If you’re on the same heading, bank twenty degrees and then come around on five.”

“Now that’s what I’m talking about. Ready for some fireworks?”

“Light it up like the 4th of July.”

“Tacky, Steve!” Tony yelled, and then he was adjusting course, counting it out, turning, and—

Barreling back out into open sky, Tony flew not more than an arm’s length from the first ship that moved like some kind of bird of prey except a hell of a lot less appealing to look at. Tony only had time to mutter “Fuck you, you’re dead,” as he skimmed along the hull that almost seemed to absorb light into its weird, metallic surface. Then he was dropping, dropping like a stone as the missile collided full force with the ship, with a detonation that was followed by a rocking round wave that felt like it rattled Tony’s fillings.

One down, but back on the ground it seemed like things were getting hairy for Steve.

“What’s the plan?” Tony asked hurriedly as he arced over, trying to calculate the angles and chances. “We can’t—”

“—lose the car, I know,” Steve replied, and now he was all business. “If I leave it, it’s a sitting duck, but if I don’t, the next rocket’s probably coming for the moving red target with me in it.”

Tony thought fast, but Steve seemed to beat him to it.

“How good’s your aim?”

“Pretty good. What are you doing?” Tony frowned before heading low, all the while expecting and dreading another missile.

“Making bad decisions. You must be rubbing off. I need you to grab me in fifteen.”

“What? Steve, no. Bad—”

“I trust you, now don’t make me regret it!”

Biting down hard, Tony flew faster than he thought he knew how without going supersonic. The air ripping through the crack in the face plate stung bitterly like an angry laceration, but there wasn’t time for anything, no time except to fix on the car, all sensors locked and hope like fucking hell Steve wasn’t wrong.

And then it was five, four, three – as Steve’s foot was on the car’s window ledge, hands gripping tight to steady himself – two, and…

As Steve pushed, Tony grabbed him, simple as that. And then they were flying low to the ground as Tony tried to slow down enough to let Steve down, and somewhere in there one of the nine decided he wanted to play.

“Shit,” Tony growled as he nearly ran right into it as it rose out of the gloom like a shadow, JARVIS unable to lock onto it without a direct visual. The energy signature that had identified the ones in New York was strikingly absent, and instead there was just the hiss of metal as it lashed out, nine feet of barbed limbs and decidedly malicious intent. With another muffled curse Tony got clear and put a few hundred yards of space between them and it before he was able to drop Steve down.

“Thanks,” Steve panted, already on his feet and shield at the ready, because he was just that kind of crazy.

“Any time,” Tony replied a little dizzily. “How are we going to catch it, though?”

“Left the parking brake on. I figure it’ll stop somewhere down the road.”

Laughing light-headedly, Tony looked around and then up.

“Ten to one isn’t so bad. I think we can take ‘em.”

“It’s fun, right?” Steve parroted back at Tony, with what might almost have been a flash of a grin, and Tony nodded after a beat.

“Sure. Totally. Like a carnival ride. You ever been to Disney World?”

“Nope,” Steve answered as he took a step back. “But here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to get that guy—” he pointed to the large one, “—low enough that I can get on top of it. And then we bring it down, hard.”

“We’ll go,” Tony told him as he was already starting to move forward, dipping forward across the destroyed ground. “To Disney, I mean. You and me. You’d love Splash Mountain.”

“No flying involved, is there?” Steve asked in his ear as Tony aimed straight for the creature’s front, zipping through and around its front two legs that were also strangely reminiscent of mandibles.

“I’m asking you on a date to the most magical place on earth, and you’re hung up on the flying, which was your idea,” Tony hissed as he hit the ground at a roll to avoid the faster-than-he’d-thought kick of a very sharp leg.

“Yeah, well,” Steve said as Tony played possum and let the thing come right for him, really hoping Steve’s timing was just as good as his. “Nobody’s perfect.”

The thing was over him in two long strides, bending low as it started to slash down, and Tony sucked in a breath and activated the thrusters to get himself out of the way just as Steve clambered up the thing’s back and, without missing a beat, swung the edge of his shield down against the top of its head (body?) with as much force and momentum as he had. He almost lost his footing as it shuddered under him, the same high pitched noise Tony had heard the first time wailing through the air as Steve struck it again, and then a third time. The last time something cracked, and by the time Tony was on his feet there was a snap and then the thing was falling to the ground with an audible thud. Steve, who looked like he’d just been out for a morning stroll, jumped down like it was no big deal.

“That a yes?” Tony asked breathlessly, after a moment.

“Maybe we can talk about it later?” Steve asked, and his head swung up as the second dark ship passed overhead again. “If you’ve got that, then I’ve got the little guys down here.”

“Save a few spots on your dance card for me. I’ll be back in no time.”

Taking to the air again, Tony exhaled, conjuring up the images of the town he’d burned, and then, in a whirl of furious disgust, punched straight back upwards.

“Now what shall we do with you?” he murmured to himself and  JARVIS, as he soared up and around, trying to get some kind of read on how to take down the robo-stealth-jet from hell.

“The wings seem to be made of a very thin material in order to allow it to move as silently as it does,” JARVIS observed, and Tony had to give it to him because as usual, JARVIS was on the money.

“I could kiss you, you know.”

“Perhaps you should save it for your date, sir,” JARVIS suggested mildly, and Tony laughed before booking it straight for a wing.

The ship rolled almost as easily as Tony did, and he had to play catch-as-catch-can just to try and keep up. Whoever or whatever had designed these was working with some intense technology, but for once Tony wasn’t really in the mood to have a conversation about it over dinner. There was only one way this was going to end, and it was definitively with someone dead.

Pulling around, Tony gave it an extra burst, trying to ignore the display on the right hand side that was flashing his power levels at 31%. The thing had to go down, and it was going to go down _now_.

“Easy does it,” Tony said as he threw his arm out and bent, hard, pushing himself with everything he had into the spinning wing. He barely got a finger on it the first try, but it was close, so close, and… fuck, he was going to get it…

With a snarl Tony lashed his leg out, tearing through the thin metal almost like it was foil, and he used his repulsor jet to snap his leg back out and rip right through the siding. Then, then it was time to go as the ship’s spiralling suddenly became erratic, and it looped lower toward the ground before starting to plummet. Time to go, really. Anytime now.

Except that was when things kind of went sideways. Leg tangled up in the thin sheet metal and strands of what looked like filaments, Tony had a second of ‘oh shit’ horror before he knew he was in trouble for real.

“Tony, get clear,” came Cap’s decidedly terse voice, and Tony would have laughed except he was too busy struggling to get free.

“Trying! Not helpful!”

“Pull up and do it now!”

With a yell Tony bent his leg as far as he was able, trying to ignore the flare of pain shooting through his left hip as he did. JARVIS adjusted the direction and momentum as they went, and Tony went for full commitment to the bit as he pushed with all the desperation he had to tear loose. The tearing sound as the wing came apart around him, setting him free, was very momentarily a breath of fresh air, instant, flooding relief, but it didn’t last more than a second. That was all the time it took to realize that the sparking, smoking debris had pulled loose with him, and was now on a very different trajectory.

“Cap- Cap get out of there!”

“Sort of pinned down here, Tony.”

“Steve, move!”

It was a contest of what could fall fastest: him or several large pieces of broken and twisted metal. Of course, according to the laws of gravity it should have been a tie, but Tony was good at cheating on things as basic as this. Using the extra push from the thrusters, Tony sucked in one more breath and hoped this time he was doing it right, making the right decisions, taking a step with no regrets.

No time to second guess himself. He hit the ground in an aerial somersault and then was moving up again in less than half a second, and as he hit the metal again, this time from the bottom, it jolted through his spine.

“You stupid fucking—”  Steve was swearing, but there wasn’t time or breath to notice that because then Tony was hitting the ground again, hard, and with a skidding, expanding impact zone. Carried by the momentum of the metal shards, Tony was vaguely conscious of hitting one of the smaller bots as he went in a tangle of limbs and a surprising amount of pain. After that, it was a little while before he registered anything except the rise and fall of his own chest.

*   *   *   *   *

“Snap out of it.”

Hey, Steve. That was Steve. Blinking, Tony tried to move and found he could, with difficulty. Both arms seemed to move under him, and one leg. The other one wasn’t as cooperative, but with a grunt Tony was able to shift that too. So – yay, four limbs. Woo.

“One of these days, Tony,” Steve muttered, and Tony became vaguely aware of the fact that he was staring with open eyes, and could only see darkness.

“…did I go blind?” he asked after a moment, because it seemed important to know.

“No. It’s just dark out, and without your suit or the car, we don’t have a light.”

“Huh.”

“Come on, get up.”

Tony had to take two tries to sit up, and when he managed he did so with a groan.

“Jesus fucking take the wheel. I could use that vodka now myself.”

There was the faint feeling of pressure - a hand on his shoulder - as Steve laughed, quiet and breathless, and Tony then turned to pick out Steve’s profile even in the dark.

“We win?”

“Yeah, but winning might be relative.”

“No one else is dead, I’ll take that.”

Reaching up to tug off his helmet, Tony tasted metal at the back of his mouth and hoped vaguely that he hadn’t knocked a tooth loose. It’d be hard to get a dentist appointment at this hour. Steve sat back a little, and Tony could still just see his outline.

“…why is there no light?”

“I think you damaged the suit, and your leg.”

The reactor embedded in the front of the suit was dark, and Tony took a long, slow breath before trying again to move the leg that had protested when he’d first tried it. Oh, yeah, definitely something up there. At least it could probably be worse.

“What about you?” he asked Steve. “You hurt?”

“No.” Steve shook his head, and Tony took a steadying breath before trying to hold where he could sort of vaguely see Steve’s eyes.

“Yeah, then why are you bleeding?”

“How can you—?” Steve started to ask, but as soon as he glanced down it became pretty apparent. Even in the dark, it was easy to see that the white of the Captain America uniform was stained a deep colour, and there were only so many guesses you needed to make.

“Genius,” Tony answered, but it was flat.

There was quiet around them for a few moments before Tony could think of what to say next.

“You think more are coming?”

“Probably. They’ll know we’re a threat now.”

“Right. Of course.”

Tony laughed, low and edgy, and he closed his eyes for a moment to replace the darkness outside with the familiar one behind his eyelids.

“We should move,” Steve suggested after a pause, and although the hysterical, possibly re-concussed part of Tony’s brain wanted to say ‘why bother?’ he managed to keep his mouth shut for once in his life.

“...okay. Help me up?”

“Yeah. Hold on.”

It took both of them, and nearly five minutes, but Tony did manage to get fully upright and somewhat mobile. His leg wasn’t going to hold much weight on its own, at least not right away, but with one arm slung around Steve’s shoulder, he was able to walk on it. Wouldn’t be fast, and wouldn’t be efficient, but he’d manage.

“So. Where to?”

“Got to find the car,” Steve answered, and it was in the same quiet, largely expressionless tone of voice.

“In the dark. Without a light.”

“Guess so.”

Tony nodded.

“Then let’s go. I don’t much feel like staying here.”

Taking stock, as they began to walk, Tony glanced very briefly at Steve, who looked straight ahead and very carefully only took shallow breaths. So, both injured then, trying to make their way across the uneven ground of the muddy, pock-marked expanse littered with shrapnel and bits of destroyed robot without any way to see three feet ahead. No way to find the car, and no way to know whether they were about to be set upon, or ambushed by things that were similar, or maybe even worse.

But hey, at least he still had four limbs. Swallowing the fear and the doubt, Tony tried to match Steve step for step as they walked through the dark, into the dark.

* * *

 

**03.08**

It took until dawn to find the car. It had gone significantly further than either of them would have guessed, and when they did find it, it had gone into a tree, smashing out one of the headlights and breaking one of the windows.

Steve didn’t say anything as he helped Tony around to the far side of the car and opened the door for him. The weariness was like a weight on Tony’s shoulders as he pulled his leg into the car after him and tugged the door shut again afterwards.

He didn’t say anything either. If he did, he was afraid of what he’d say.

*   *   *   *   *

Tony dreamed of the end of the world.

It came with fire and brimstone and aliens and machines. It came as Steve sat on the beam of a burned out roof while Tony hovered nearby, simply because he could, and the two of them watched as the world ended right in front of them. Across New York, the Stark tower was falling, one of the walls crumbling, and inside he was there and already losing everyone.

Scrambling to pull someone up, a woman he didn’t know, the two of them made a break for the stairs, but the stairs were on fire and there were corpses there, ones that he’d poured gasoline over and then lit the match. All the other exits were blocked by giant spiders crawling over every surface, and then the floor was falling and—

—and Pepper. Always, always Pepper.

Tony sat next to her with her head in his lap as she smiled at him, her hands playing with something that looked like a blade of grass.

“You were never any good at goodbyes, Tony.”

“I’m not sure anyone is.”

“Maybe not. But sometimes we have to let go.”

“Or maybe we just have to hold on tighter.”

“Or _maybe_ , Mr. Stark, sometimes they’re the same thing.”

It was the day Pepper was leaving, and Tony tried to stop her, tried to keep her from walking out the door because he knew what was going to happen when she did, but he was always two steps behind. Pepper stepped through the doorframe, and as she did, the world ended. Fire rained on New York, and Pepper, her hand just out of reach, slipped slowly into the dark.

Standing on the edge of the precipice, as the spiders crawled all around, not touching him but never leaving, Tony tried to breathe through the panic because this was it. This was it, and he’d already lost before he’d begun.

Two ravens sat on the apple tree, growing through the concrete, and their black eyes stared out from behind black feathers as Howard Stark read from a Bible. On the grass, Luck and Steve played with a coin.

“What do you think?” asked one of the ravens, cocking its head to the side as it studied Tony from its branch.

“I think,” said Muninn, “that if a man thinks the gods have abandoned him then he has forgotten his friends.”

“Lord, what fools these mortals be,” agreed Huginn, as he beat his wings and ruffled his tail feathers, and both of the ravens began to laugh in a strange cackling cough. In the space of that sound, Tony knew with a clarity and a certainty he’d never experienced before that Cthulu was indeed waiting in the depths, a wind was in the door, and the darkness under the bed had always been the place of monsters.

Diaphanous dress spread out across the wet grass, Luck passed the coin between her fingers before tossing it into the air, leaving Steve to catch it and cover it with his palm.

“What do you think?” asked Thought again. “Heads or tails, brother?”

“Heads,” replied Memory, “and tails. The answer is always both.”

“As you say. And now that our message is given, let the end come as it will. ‘Nevermore,’ quoth the raven,” said the raven.

With that he opened his beak as if to swallow the world, and in that there was the real end – the real, most terrifying end. In that, there was nothingness.

*   *   *   *   *

Tony woke with a shiver and a fire that had spread slowly to his hip while he slept. Swallowing back the violent nausea in the pit of his stomach, Tony closed his eyes and waited until he could deal with sunlight and wakefulness without puking up the nothing in his stomach.

“Take it slow,” Steve advised quietly, and Tony did just that. Although after a couple of long, even breaths he was feeling better enough to open his eyes again and squint slightly over at Steve.

“…think there are any all-day breakfast places around here?”

“Last IHOP was two miles back.”

“Damn.” Breathing out again, slowly, Tony resettled himself before pulling off the gauntlets he hadn’t even bothered to remove up until now. “Where are we going?”

Steve’s hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, and in the light of day it was much more obvious that whatever had gotten him last night had done a pretty messy job of it.

“I’ve got a good memory for maps, so I still remember more or less the route for the next leg, through Texas. Once we get into New Mexico though…” He shrugged, eyes carefully on the road.

“I’ll see what I can do about that.”

Without the suit functioning there wasn’t much Tony was going to be able to fix, but it was possible that the only reason it had failed on him so completely was that the power had been so low. He wasn’t going to be able to change that in any significant degree with what was handy, but wherever they stopped for gas next he’d come up with something. He had to.

They ended up stealing gas from a dilapidated fire station using a rubber hose. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. There were jumper cables in the back, and after some hobbling around and playing with the engines of two different partially demolished trucks, Tony figured out a way to jump-start his suit. It took both engines running at once to get enough power to actually start charging it, and to do it fast enough that they wouldn’t be here until next month, so Tony sat on the floor of the cracked fire station floor while Steve looked for and failed to find more water.

It didn’t help that he kept imagining robotic things with dark bodies crawling through the windows and across the floor, or the beat of dark wings against door.

An hour later, there was enough juice to restore minimal functionality and assess the real damage. The news was both good and bad. The good was that with a little pep in its step, the armour was able to patch back into JARVIS who sounded extremely relieved about it. The bad news was that more was smashed up than Tony had thought, and unless they were going to spend a day or two here charging the suit and patching, then it wasn’t going to be doing much for anybody.

Armed with the knowledge of what was at their backs, neither Tony nor Steve suggested the possibility of stopping for longer than they had to.

In the end, as in the beginning, there weren’t really a lot of choices. Looking over the last Iron Man suit, the last layer of defence that he, personally, had, and the last link to what had been and probably never would be again, Tony made the hard decision.

“Rogers, help me over here.”

“With what?” Steve asked as he walked over, frowning slightly. He’d managed to wash up a bit, but still looked a little like he’d been on the losing end of a particularly unenjoyable game of doctor and patient.

“Taking this apart. I need you to brace the leg so I can knock these joints out.”

Steve just stared at him for a moment.

“And this is a good idea, why?”

“It’s never going to have enough power to fly or fight again, and all it’s going to do is slow us down. If I take out the reactor, the communicator and a few other bits and pieces, at least it’ll be doing someone some good.”

Steve hesitated, eyes flickering over Tony’s face as he scanned for any sign of doubt.

“You sure about this?”

“Sure as I’ll ever be, Cap.”

So they took it apart. Tony scavenged the gloves, because the repulsors could still be handy in a fight, if push came to shove, and he had Steve help him break the left leg so he could use the knee and a splint for a brace. It helped enough that he could walk pretty well on his own when they were done, and after that all that was left was tearing out the inside of the helmet and refitting the optical device. With some wire and a piece of metal as a makeshift knife and hammer, Tony managed to make something he could wear over one eye and that hooked over behind his ear. The latest in high-tech fashion? Maybe not, but it’d serve the purpose.

“Bye buddy,” Tony told the armour, sitting alone and in pieces on the fire hall floor, and he patted it lightly on what used to be a shoulder before twitching his lips in an apologetic smile. “See you on the other side, one way or another.”

Now that he could actually drive again, Steve let him, and they tore away through the grey streets full of echoing silence and the buzz of flies as they started to move south and west one more time.

*   *   *   *   *

Things started to move strangely around the time they hit Santa Fe, and this happened in two ways, although the second didn’t become apparent until later.

The obvious movement was that they began to catch dark shapes in the mirrors, sometimes, and on one occasion when Tony took them straight through an errant patch of sunshine, Steve was actually able to make out the clear outline of a ship in the otherwise grey sky. It was gone again almost as soon as it had come, but once they’d seen it, there was no choice but to keep running. Just outside of Albuquerque a platoon of strange things that looked more like mantises than anything flitted across the road, trying to grab at the wheels and pull them back. Even after Tony floored the pedal and left them in the dust the things followed until they finally vanished in the rear-view.

“I don’t get it,” he mumbled to Steve, frowning as his eyes flickered over the rolling hills to the north. “What the hell are they doing?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Steve answered, and he looked tense and exhausted as either of them had been at any point. Every time they saw something move now, it was hard not to flinch slightly, not knowing what was coming, or what they were waiting for.

“If they have the fire power to wipe out a whole country, then why are they just poking at us with a stick?”

Steve rubbed the back of his neck and then leaned his head from side to side to try to work out some of his own stiffness, no doubt.

“The only reason I’d send out harassing troops like this would be to chase somebody into a trap.”

“So they’re herding us,” Tony concluded grimly.

“That’d be my guess. I think there’s something they really don’t want us to see, so they’re making very sure we don’t get there.”

“So what do we do?” Tony asked, fear and bile rising in the back of his throat again.

Steve was silent for a long time, and Tony eventually figured out with a degree of surprise and irritation that Steve wasn’t planning to say anything at all.

“Steve, this is your deal. You’re the one who makes the plans. What do we do?”

“I don’t know, Tony,” Steve snapped back, dark shadows under his eyes and mounting frustration in them.

“You are so much help. Captain America to the rescue.”

“You know what? Fuck off, Stark. You know how many times I’ve kept you alive this last week?”

Scoffing a sound that came out closer to a growl, Tony tightened his fingers around the steering wheel until his knuckles were white.

“Oh, yeah, you get all the credit. What was I thinking? When someone writes our epitaph they can say ‘This was all Steve.’”

 “You just can’t stomach the fact that it’s not all about you,” Steve hurled back with some violence, more than a little heat in his voice.

“That’s such a new one. How long have you been sitting on that, Rogers?” Tony tried not to snarl and didn’t really succeed. “What other examples of sparkling wit have you been holding out on me?”

“Nothing, except that I should have stayed at the church.”

Silence, after that, punctuated only by JARVIS quietly directing them down a particular road. Tony started to turn that way and had to swerve as something large and dark moved across the track, throwing shadows and spectres in its wake.

Taking the only other road available, Tony plunged on into the accumulating thunderstorm on the horizon, tasting fury and cold panic on the back of his tongue as they went.

*   *   *   *   *

They lost the car near the border.

Coming through a set of particularly winding and circuitous back roads in order to avoid any major inter-state crossings, Tony was navigating their way through a series of hills and dun-coloured cliffs. The driving wasn’t difficult but it required attention, and Steve had mercifully drifted off to sleep himself, one too-long leg pulled up in what was no doubt a very uncomfortable compromise. Tony, who was trying to pay attention to the road and simultaneously ignore Steve’s existence, was not even slightly prepared when he finally pulled around the major corner and into the dipping valley. Although as soon as he did, one thing became immediately apparent.

He’d found the trap.

“Steve,” he urged lowly. “Cap, wake up. I think I might have maybe located where they wanted us to be.”

Steve, who stirred slowly at first, and then quickly when actually roused, sat up straight in his seat and peered at the horizon line.

“…yeah, I think it’s safe to say that might be it.”

The line of black ships strung across the entire valley, while dark things crawled through the undergrowth down below. It reminded Tony vaguely of what Rhodey had once referred to as the ‘kill box,’ and if there had ever been an apt application for the term, this was certainly it.

“Now what?”

“Stark—”

“No, right, forget I asked. I’ll figure it out, why don’t I?”

“Tony shut up. We’re going over the cliffs.”

Tony did close his mouth, and considered the low valley, and the darkening clouds advancing rapidly.

“I think that might be a bad plan, Cap.”

“You got a better one?”

Fair point. Tony peered up along the cliff line, noting its own dips and basins.

“Not even a little. Bet you miss flying now, don’t you?”

“Not that I’ll admit to. Let’s go now. They know we’re coming.”

They paused only to take the last couple of granola bars and the remaining four bottles of water out of the trunk, and after that there was no looking back, not if there was going to be even the slightest chance. Steve didn’t even seem to mind abandoning the car, which spoke to the urgency of the situation, and then it was time to climb.

The actual going up was somewhat challenging, but not as bad as it might have been. With the gloves still operating partly, Tony was able to find crevices that might not have been otherwise accessible, and he hauled his way upwards with only some trepidation. A man who used the sky as his own personal playground had long since gotten over any lingering fear of heights.

Steve seemed steady, too, and Tony watched him carefully, if still with an angry edge as they climbed up and over. There was one point where he thought he saw Steve start to slip and reached for him, but Steve caught himself almost immediately and, if he’d noticed Tony’s attempt at assistance, pretended very convincingly that he hadn’t.

So, up was relatively easy, but as it turned out, down was very, very hard. It had more to do with the leg than anything. The brace was well and good but not extremely bendable, so trying to get down without falling and breaking his neck was a lot like trying to do ballet, in the dark, on a mountain covered in ice. Actually it wasn’t that different at all. At no point did Steve offer to help, which Tony was fiercely glad of, but he did keep the pace slow and was obviously trying his best to choose routes that wouldn’t be too perilous. Considerate, but didn’t make him any less of an asshole.

They went, and the clouds came closer with an advancing dark line that was clearly sleeting rain. Tony kept a cautious eye on it as they moved, slowly and painstakingly, but it was when the lightening forked across the sky only a mile or so off to their left that he swallowed his pride and did his best to scramble over to join Steve.

“We need to find a shelter, or we’re going to be swept right over the edge.”

Scanning the line ahead, Steve nodded before pointing forward another ten minutes hike down and inward to a stand of trees growing in a protected hollow.

“There. It’s the best we’re going to find.”

“Then let’s go. I don’t feel like taking a swan dive today.”

Ten minutes turned out to be more like twenty, and Tony’s leg was blazing in agony by the time they got there. On top of that he seemed to have torn his hand open again on some rock, and the rain starting to patter down around and over them wasn’t helping even a little.

Pushing his way under the cover of the low-hanging trees and against the sheer wall opposite, Tony took a slow breath and counted out numbers in his head. In, and then out. In, and then out. Steve just stood and looked down at the valley as darkness swept over, the rain and thunder coming down for real now. Sliding down into a sitting position, Tony sucked in another breath, knowing it wasn’t helping and trying to fake his way into believing it was.

“Kind of makes you miss Thor, doesn’t it?” he asked, voice a little higher than he’d meant, and Steve turned around, slowly, before coming back under cover. His hair was already plastered down from the rain, and water dripped slowly down his shield.

“Makes me miss a lot of things.”

“Think we’ll ever see him again?” Tony asked, and he didn’t know if Steve could tell, but he was desperate here. Maybe Steve couldn’t tell, or if he did he didn’t care, because he looked the other way.

“Probably not.”

“Clint? Tasha? Bruce? They’re just… gone?” And then, when Steve didn’t answer, Tony brought up unsteady hands to scrub them over his face. “What about Pepper? Steve, is Pepper dead?”

“She’s dead, Tony,” Steve told him, and another rumble of thunder shook its way through the hills. “Everyone’s dead. You’re stuck with just me now.”

Tony came to a realization at that moment that startled him, although looking back it was beautifully, painfully obvious. Dropping his hands into his lap, he stared at Steve for a moment.

“You haven’t thought we were going to succeed for a long time, have you?”

No answer.

“Steve?”

“No, Tony,” he finally threw back, and now he was angry, almost shaking with it. That’s fine. Tony was shaking with it too. Pushing himself back up to standing, Tony shook off his gloves and dropped them to the ground before stepping forward.

“Did you ever think we were going to accomplish anything!? Or was this whole thing just a game, just some bullshit before we croak?”

Steve stared at him, jaw line set, and he didn’t answer because he had no answer to give. Well, Tony had something to give him.

He didn’t know exactly what he was doing until the punch was already flying, and maybe he wasn’t going to do much except break his hand but that was all there was left to do. Except even in that he didn’t quite manage to succeed, because Steve caught his fist easily before shoving Tony backwards, growling something under his breath before storming forward, eyes flashing brighter than the sky overhead.

“Whatever I’ve done, I did it for you! How do you still not see that!? You’re so busy looking back, that you haven’t—” Steve couldn’t even finish the sentence, and Tony let the tense, furious silence hang before he asked the obvious question.

“For me?” He kept his voice low, angry disbelief clearly written through it. “Really? Please enlighten me.”

“Yeah, Stark, for you. I’ve known since the beginning you wouldn’t come with us back to base, and I came along so you wouldn’t have to be alone. Does that make it clear enough? Or do you want to live in denial a little longer?”

And probably the right response to something like that was to be the cooler head here and to tell Steve he was sorry and valued his friendship. But really, that was such fucking bullshit.

Grabbing Steve’s collar with one hand and sliding his other around the back of Steve’s neck, Tony kissed him as hard as he was able, not sure what the hell was going to happen next but no longer giving a shit one way or the other. Which worked out, because then Steve was kissing him just as roughly, and before Tony could do more than bite down hard on Steve’s lip, his back was against the rock face and – damn – okay.

When he shoved Steve back slightly (and only able to because Steve let him, the prick), it was to drag in a rough breath and meet dark eyes unsteadily with his own.

“…I still kind of want to punch you in the face,” he said, and Steve just huffed a laugh before pushing Tony backwards again and moving his mouth to Tony’s neck.

“Feeling’s mutual,” he reassured lowly, and Tony, tipping his head back, inhaled again raggedly.

“So I didn’t pack any condoms in my end of the world travel bag.”

This time Steve’s laughter tickled against his skin, and as the rain came down around them just beyond the trees, Tony quickly distracted by the sensation of teeth in his shoulder.

“Don’t worry. We’ll make do.”

* * *

 

**02.09**

Maybe it was just Tony, but things somehow didn’t seem quite as grim after a blowjob from Captain America. Or maybe it wasn’t just him, since Steve looked kind of smug too. Yes, they were probably both still going to die, and pretty soon, but at least for a little while they were warm, and dry, and intent on other things. The way Steve’s shoulders and back moved were of particular interest, and for another period of time it was a learning experience, where there was an all-new map to trace.

A little while later, when the storm finally started to move on (although there was still thunder rumbling in the distance), Steve tapped Tony’s stomach before sitting up and stretching slightly.

“I just thought of something.”

“Dangerous,” Tony commented as a tiny grin flicked up to his lips.

“You’re cuter when your mouth is shut.”

“That’s not what you said ten minutes ago.”

Laughing with a slight shake of his shoulders, Steve slowly got up and set about getting dressed again. Since that seemed to be absorbing his attention – and for good reason, the Captain America uniform was definitely challenging – Tony took it upon himself to find out where that had been going before it got derailed.

“What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking,” Steve began, as he bent over to grab Tony’s shirt and throw it at him, “that if those guys are right, and there are a lot of worlds out there where everything’s happened, then at least it’s in a different one where I’ve got this particular regret.”

Taking the shirt, Tony pulled it on before giving Steve another warm look.

“That’s the sappiest thing you’re ever going to say to me, right? Please tell me it is.”

“I sure hope so,” Steve agreed, grinning as he offered Tony a hand up. “Now. We should get moving.”

Pulling on his pants, Tony finished getting dressed as the rain slowly started to let up, easing into an occasional patter.

“Where to?” he asked finally, when he had also retrieved his portable JARVIS-set and the gloves.

“Whatever’s past here, we’re not supposed to find it. So that means we’ve gotta go see what it is.”

Tony caught Steve’s eyes long enough for a question to be both asked and answered, and when Steve looked away again, Tony had to fight hard to keep from smiling.

“Alright. Let’s get going.”

*   *   *   *   *

The rest of the way around the valley wasn’t any easier than the first leg had been, but this time Tony wasn’t being driven on by fear of what was coming from behind. Instead, he had this strange feeling like the answer was just up ahead, and he had to figure it out as they got there or just before that. Puzzles, though; puzzles he was good at. The idea of it cleared his head and gave him something to focus on.

“My turn to ask. What’re you thinking about?” Steve asked, slightly flushed after Tony had just finished helping haul him up a particularly flat rock face that had decided to lose its climbable holds after the first person went up.

Tony, sitting back for a second to catch his breath, tapped his finger thoughtfully against the ground.

“I feel like I almost know the answer. About what’s over there. It’s one of those things you’ve been handed all the clues to, and it’s just on the tip of your tongue but you’re not quite there yet.”

“Anything in particular set you going?”

Steve stood up, and Tony followed him shortly afterwards. He hurt all fucking over but they were so close. He could literally see the forest through the trees on the other side.

“It was something you said, and something a pair of birds told me.”

“Birds?”

“Crows, specifically.”

“That’s helpful,” Steve just told him with a shake of his head as they stared onwards again, a brief flat patchwork of rock giving them a stable and relatively innocent incline to move across.

“Hm,” was Tony’s only answer as he tried to figure out exactly what it was that he was missing. It was right under his finger, if he could just remember what it was.

Steve let him be, and they picked across the cliffs in a nervous but comfortable silence as the other side yawned closer, and closer, and whatever was waiting beckoned steadily on.

*   *   *   *   *

As exhausted as they both were by the time they finally put feet on real dirt again, the idea of resting wasn’t even on the table. Whoever or whatever they’d been hunting and were being hunted by, they were on its home turf and to let down their guard for a minute would probably be a minute too much. Steve was tense and restless as he padded quietly forward, and Tony tried his valiant best to keep up. He and Steve hadn’t followed each other this far across the fucking country to be left behind now.

JARVIS’ link through the communicator was being patchy, and his voice kept going in and out. It was frustrating, but there was no way to tell whether it was just the local geography causing it, an equipment malfunction, or some other kind of disturbance. At least, not at first. Slowly, though, Tony began to realize what it was that was driving him crazy, causing him to look over his shoulder every two minutes, and probably messing with JARVIS. He should have noticed it back in Santa Fe, but he’d been too on edge, too scared to think properly.

“Cap, slow down,” he murmured quietly, coming to a halt for a second. “Come here and stand next to me. I want to test something.”

Steve didn’t answer, probably just to keep sound to a minimum, and then he was moving over next to Tony, standing shoulder to shoulder and looking in the same direction.

“…what are we testing?”

“I want to see if you can see it too. Look around, and take careful note of everything, but especially the trees. Then take a couple steps forward, and watch it as you do.”

Steve was still for a moment while his eyes tracked cautiously across their immediate landscape before coming to rest on a ground of sparse trees off to their left. Breathing slowly and softly, he took one step, and then another, and then another. And then turned immediately to look at Tony, blue eyes questioningly sharply.

“What the hell was that?”

“Hold on, I’m going to come over to you.”

Tony tried his best to replicate Steve’s steps, although the paces were longer and he had to reach for it. By the time he was beside Steve, he was comfortably sure he wasn’t crazy.

“If I’m not mistaken, and I don’t think I am, that’s a bunch of trees changing season.”

Steve’s breath sped up slightly, and he tried taking a step back before stepping forward again.

“What’s— how’s it doing that?”

“Everything’s doing it,” Tony replied before looking around him again, discerning clearly for the first time the shrubs that hadn’t been there a few yards back. It was just disorienting enough that if you weren’t watching it directly then it just caught at your eyes, and left you feeling like you were on uneven ground.

“You didn’t answer the how.”

“I’m not sure, but I’ll risk a guess that we’ve found our time-space anomaly. If it’s affecting the whole landscape around it, then that’s a pretty major hole, and it’s most likely our culprit for how our advanced robotic friends slipped through to blast our own time into non-existence.”

Steve thought about that before leaning back and giving a particularly green honeysuckle a hard look.

“So what you’re saying is that there’s a good chance we’re walking thirty years into the future, and likely into another world altogether.”

“That about sums it up, yeah.”

“And here I thought you were always full of shit,” Steve commented with a quick there-and-gone-again grin, and Tony responded in kind.

“Only 83% of the time, thank you very much.”

“Noted.”

Steve started to move forward again, though more cautiously now, and Tony followed his lead in that particular aspect. He was pretty certain he’d recognize a giant wormhole, all things being as they were, but the idea of tripping and falling down a rabbit hole a la _Alice in Wonderland_ was not especially appealing. The Queen of Hearts certainly knew how to dress, but the beheadings got a little weird for him.

“What time does JARVIS think it is?”

“Currently? **7:04**.”

“What time is it actually?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d suggest a possible approximate time and date of one pm, August, 2035.”

Steve whistled lowly, and Tony frankly had to agree with him. While he’d sort of stumbled into this theory, being proved right was sort of a strange experience. No less satisfying than any other time he’d managed to demonstrate something completely ridiculous, though, so Tony sort of hoped that somewhere, somehow, Reed Richards was turning in his bed. Steve seemed to have at least one more question for the moment, though.

“How do we know where we’re going? Are you getting readings from JARVIS?”

“Some,” Tony admitted, but they were becoming fewer and farther between. “I think we’re going to lose him soon, though. I never really thought he was going to have to transmit from orbit, through time.”

“So how do we know?”

“I think, if we keep walking, we have to end up there. Wherever there is. We seem to be moving forward now, don’t we?”

Steve nodded. “So it’s like Barton said? What distorts space distorts time, and vice versa?”

“Very good. I might just have to keep you.”

“I wouldn’t count on it just yet. We’ve still got a way’s to go.”

And wasn’t that just the truth?

*   *   *   *   *

When the display finally dimmed on his headset, Tony’s steps faltered, and he reached up for it instinctively. He’d known it was coming for an hour, and had been trying to be sparing with communication to save JARVIS the strain, but now the display was just empty and dark.

“Hey, JARVIS?” he asked quietly, unable to keep the hope out of his voice for one more push, one more revival. “JARVIS, buddy, you there?”

No. He wasn’t. That was the answer to that question. Tony had been losing things and people since he’d woken up on that god fucking awful Wednesday morning when the whole world had come down around him, and each one had been worse than the last. This, though, even prepared, left him breathless for a moment.

“You okay?” Steve asked, as he came back through the brush to find Tony who hadn’t kept up.

“Yeah. I… sorry.” He looked down before taking off the rigged-up headpiece. “JARVIS checked out.”

Looking from Tony to the headset, Steve held out a hand for it.

“Let me take it with the other stuff.”

“Might as well just leave it here.”

“No. You might need it later.”

Tony laughed slightly before looking up and giving Steve a wry smile.

“Fine. I see Captain America is back in full form. Here.” He handed over the set, and Steve carefully tucked it into the bag. “It really is just you and me now, Cap.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Steve told him before turning to look back down the way they’d come. “That’s all it ever was.”

And maybe that really was the truth of it. But there really wasn’t much time to dwell.

“You hear that?” Steve asked, and Tony held his breath, listening for a few seconds.

“…sort of. Maybe. I can hear something.”

“Like a drumming,” Steve told him, and his voice was rapidly slipping towards that no-nonsense tone he took when things were about to go bad. Tony sometimes forgot that Steve had better hearing than most. Amongst other things.

“What do you think it’s—?” Tony began to ask, but Steve quickly waved him into silence.

“It’s not drums. It’s feet. Or legs, I guess. Can’t tell how many.”

Oh good. The honour guard were finally here. Reaching down to adjust the brace on his leg, Tony watched and listened as closely as he could with normal human type senses.

After a few moments the sound seemed to dull away, and Tony was just in the middle of exhaling when Steve literally grabbed him by the shoulder, shoved, and started to pull, hard.

“Run!”

And that was it. The sounds of the forest broke all around them, the reverberations of dozens, hundreds of machines pouring out of every fissure and crack into the woods echoing through Tony and tingling down his fingers and legs with a pointed coldness. Steve’s grip on him didn’t let up, and Tony gritted his teeth and ran with every goddamn thing he had because if he didn’t? Well, somewhere there was a world where he fell and it ended right here, but this wasn’t going to be that one.

His leg was blazing with every footstep, but after the first five or so minutes he didn’t even feel it anymore, adrenaline washing away every thought except _run you son of a bitch_ , and each breath was harder than the last but it didn’t matter because if they didn’t get out of here, it was as good as done. Didn’t matter how hard each step was, or how hard the next one would be. He’d manage, he was going to fucking manage.

Blood pounding in his ears, Tony almost missed it as Steve skidded and took a right turn leading the way hard and fast down an open stretch towards a light at the end. And oh, god, it was getting closer now, all of them were getting closer, and one wrong step and he wouldn’t even have to stumble, just slow for half a second, and that was all. It was possible he was never going to walk again after this, but he had to be alive for it to count.

The bright spot got closer, and steadily closer, and Tony’s lungs were on fire as Steve got farther ahead, and then slowed down like the asshole he was to take the same pace as Tony. And Jesus Christ, Tony would like to scream at him to just go but he didn’t have the breath, so they just ran together, streaking into the bright patch and into the open air and—

—and into a fence? Tony almost stopped, right then, and he would have if Steve wasn’t literally shoving him up the fence bodily.

Seeing bright spots dancing in his vision, Tony just grabbed hold of the mesh and climbed. By the time he hit the top Steve was beside him, already going over, and he was there at the bottom to grab him as Tony literally fell over. No time, though, not even now.

“Keep going,” Steve panted. “They’ll be coming over.” And all it took was a glance backward to confirm it. Tony only caught a half-glimpse of what seemed like thousands of dark things and shapes of all sizes and descriptions, each one more abhorrent than the last as they screamed out of the forest and toward the fence.

“Fuck,” he almost sobbed, as Steve grabbed him and pulled, and somehow they were running again, straight toward the enormous, incomprehensible industrial complex that rose up before and around them like a palace of technology and destruction. Steve didn’t stop, and so neither did Tony. Neither of them looked back as they ran.

* * *

 

 

**01.10**

In the centre of the end of the world, the place from which it all originated, Tony sort of wished that there was time to properly appreciate the moment. It was insane, for one, and as they’d crept their way along one side of the vast, impossible complex he’d wondered for just a second if he hadn’t totally lost it, just checked out of the rational world and let it go on without him. It’d explain a lot, like the killer robots, and the fact that if he watched the sky too carefully he could actually see time and space bending and folding. He’d stopped looking pretty quickly, because if he wasn’t already insane then that was going to take care of it pretty damn fast.

“Stay low,” Steve murmured, and Tony didn’t need to be told twice. The things patrolling the perimeter here looked sort of like what he imagined hydras would if they were a) real, b) mechanical, somehow, and c) had several extra limbs and a tail that looked like a long chain of razorblades. Not that attractive, he had to say. He was not keen to make friends.

“We need to get inside,” Tony hissed back, chest nearly in the dirt he was so low.

Steve didn’t indicate he’d heard, but Tony assumed he had, and just waited with bated-breath until they were ready to move again.

After a long pause, a sweeping pass by the guards that seemed to run in circular loops, Steve shifted before moving again, ever so slightly at first, and then fast. With a soft curse the only sound of Tony’s intense discomfort and displeasure, he followed after.

This end of the palisade terminated abruptly in a dark grey, shuttered building wing, and Tony’s eyes traced the outline of it against a sky that changed by the second. (He wasn’t going to look at the sky, he wasn’t, but the fact remained that it was shifting as if it were getting ready for something. Another attack somewhere else? There was no dark hole in the sky, and no window through to the ruins of New York, so it was hard to know what was going on, and what could happen yet.)

Making a quick run for the building, Steve flew across concrete and gravel, red, white and blue against grey and black lines and walls. Gritting his teeth, Tony tried not to feel the way his leg buckled slightly with every step now. Steve’s eyes were on him every foot of the way until they were both pressed against the door, breathing hard, and then Steve’s hand went up to test the door. Closing his eyes, Tony waited one beat, two, and then… the door just shifted slightly, sealed and locked up tight.

“Fuck, fuck,” he started to murmur, but before he got further than the second repetition Steve was on his feet, leg snapping out, and then with a resounding crack, the door was no longer closed at all.

“After you,” he said lowly, and Tony just nodded fast before ducking through the door and inside.

Turned out that inside didn’t make any more sense than outside. The door opened into a long grey hallway that seemed to stretch forever in one direction, and more doors than could easily be counted all lined against one wall. Tony blinked, and then started to limp his way in.

“Which… way?” Steve asked, still sounding remarkably like Captain America. Tony wondered giddily if he’d get to talk to straight-up Steve Rogers again before the end, whatever the end was going to be. Seemed like they were going to find out one way or the other soon.

“I don’t know if it matters. Let’s pick one, see where it goes.” He scanned the row of doors again as it disappeared into shadows in the distance, almost unfathomable in its very existence.

“You pick. I’ve got to do the heavy lifting,” Steve replied.

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

Giving him a knowing look, Steve moved over before ducking low enough that Tony could easily get an arm over his shoulders again, and one of Steve’s arms came up around Tony’s waist to steady.

“You’re not going much further like that, and if I was going to ditch you I’d have tied you up, gagged you and left you in the trunk of the car a few days ago.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Tony replied sourly, although it was easier to move like this and didn’t cause a shooting pain every time he did anything.

“My pleasure. Now which door are we taking?”

Taking a breath, Tony ran the random number generator in his head before pointing vaguely to the sixth one down.

“There. Six. Lucky number.”

“Thought that was seven.”

“Let’s hope not, because we’re going through here.”

Between the two of them they made their way down to the door, and Tony was the one who reached for the handle, opened it, and ushered them through into whatever it was they’d chosen.

And what it was, was… insane. What it was was insane.

A huge laboratory vaulted up and outwards, illuminated in fluorescents with an entire wall made up of one long window that overlooked some kind of assembly line, or plant below. Sucking in a breath as his eyes tracked across row after row of things, prototypes, and machines he had no way of even hazarding a guess as to what they could be, Tony felt dizzy. Steve took one slow step inside, and then another, and Tony suddenly understood what most people must feel like when they stepped into his play spaces for the first time.

“What the actual fuck?” he wondered aloud.

“This is… how’s this even possible?” Steve asked, and Tony didn’t have an answer for him, not really.

“Someone built something, and it went very wrong.”

“Yeah, but… what could even begin something like this?”

Tony gestured to a chair and they went over to it together before Steve helped him down, and then stepped away so that he could go see what was going on in the vast factory below. Dazed, running on empty, and with no idea where to start, Tony just looked around the room again.

“The answer’s right here, and I still don’t know what it is.”

“They’re building those... robots, down there,” Steve told him, venturing a quick glance back. “Hundreds of them, and I can’t guess how many different kinds.”

“What the fuck am I missing?” Tony asked, and this time Steve gave him a hard, considering look as he turned around properly.

“Someone once told me that if anyone could figure something out, it was probably you.”

“Yeah, I said that,” Tony told him dryly. “But I’m a little short of ideas right now.”

“So do what you do best. You once hacked SHIELD with a gadget the size of my thumbnail. Figure it out.”

“Impolite, but not incorrect,” Tony told him, eyes turning more speculative as he eyed a number of different screens and what appeared to be interfaces near one end. There was no way of knowing if he’d be able to use them at all, but he also didn’t know that he _couldn’t_. “Roll me over there.”

Steve fought an involuntary smile, showing that in some ways some things would never change, and then he came over to help push the chair along the floor and over to the broad, elaborate terminals down the way.

“What the chair tells us,” Tony remarked, “is that at some point a person was here. I don’t think he or she is anymore, but at some point someone was here. Someone designed the first prototypes that started all of this.”

“There’s not many people who could do that, not in the time we live in. I can probably count them on one hand.”

“Me too,” Tony agreed, eyes scanning rapidly as his hands came up and started to test, experiment and decipher. One of the pads responded to his hand, demonstrating conclusively his point about a human architect behind this monstrosity. Trying different buttons, screens and gestures, Tony found that the entire ensemble seemed to work largely like some of the intuitive touch-based interfaces he’d seen proposed at a recent conference in Washington, DC, and that gave him a basis to start from.

Belatedly he added, “In fact I can only think of two and a half people, and one of them is me.”

“The other one and a half?” Steve prompted as he leaned over Tony’s shoulder, eyes scanning the screen for something he could make sense of. It seemed to be mostly numbers, some kind of searchable, encrypted database.

“Richards, weird space freak that he is, and his new BFF. One Henry Hank Pym.”

There was a faint sound from somewhere, far off but audible, and Steve turned on his heel fast before quickly walking back down the lab towards the door they’d left wide open. Tony didn’t both to watch him go, because he doubted they had much time and he didn’t want to waste a second of it.

“Come on,” he muttered, low and urgent as his fingers flew over the touch points, testing, trying, failing, and then testing again. Someone had started this, and someone had done it for a reason. It wouldn’t solve it, but he needed to know what the last clue was to make all the pieces fit together and make it all make sense. Far down the room, Steve stood in the doorway, tense and ready as his eyes followed shadows in the long, long hall. After only a minute, he coiled back away from the door.

“Tony,” he called as he started to walk back in Tony’s direction, and he wasn’t bothering to be quiet so that was a bad sign. “Tony, we’ve got to go. Got to move.”

“I need another two minutes. I can feel that I almost have it, if I can just… Steve. You’ve got to buy me another two minutes.”

“We don’t have two minutes.” He was starting to jog, now, on his way over, and Tony’s heart rate picked up in corresponding fashion. He was so fucking close. The code wasn’t actually a code- it was a translation. It was the systems themselves reading the network data and communicating it between themselves.

 Hands moving even faster, Tony breezed through the key words and phrases he knew, each one disappearing faster than the last.

“Tony, _now,_ ” Steve almost barked, as his hands closed around the back of the chair and started to pull, but no, Tony had this, he totally fucking had this and he lunged forward to input the one, the last one, the one he knew would work.

_Ultimate electronic defence system_

And just like that the screens all lit up at once, and a single word was emblazoned across all of them before being replaced by a countdown timer that currently read **1:10** , and Jesus, it all made sense, like looking through a prism and seeing the other side refracted but still whole.

“Ultron?”

“Steve, we have to go.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“No, you don’t understand, we have to _go._ ”

He was on his feet in a moment, and then Steve had him again and they were running for the door on the opposite side they’d come in from. Even then there was barely enough time, because as they were literally just passing through the doorframe, the wall just beside Tony’s head exploded in a crackle of gunfire.

There was a flashing second in which Tony noted that these bots were different than any of the others they’d seen so far – sentries, maybe - and they came with a whole fucking arsenal. That, and they moved fast.

“You know where we’re going?” Steve asked as he pulled them hard around the corner, and Tony didn’t waste any time before just going with the direction in question and moving his legs as fast as he could. 

“I don’t have a clue, but I know we get there.”

“Care to explain that?”

He would, he’d love to explain it, but then the bots were through the door too and Steve was throwing Tony pretty much into a wall as his shield came up, deflecting a hail of bullets in a slightly blinding show of accuracy and good timing.

“Wish I had a gun to give you,” Steve bit out, because this time there wasn’t even a suit between Tony and what was advancing towards them, but sometimes Steve forgot about the fact that Tony never went anywhere without an ace up his sleeve.

“I’ll settle for what I do have,” he threw back, and then one of the Iron Man gauntlets was on his hand and in the air and the repulsor was blasting hard, the force of it throwing the nearest enforcer-bot a good ten feet where it hit a table hard.

“Got it,” was all Steve said before he was going for the other, and then there was a shield lodging firmly in the thing’s face area as it cracked and toppled.

“There’s gonna be a lot more where those came from,” Tony warned, and Steve clearly already knew that and was on it because then they had each other one more time and were high-tailing it through the maze of twisting halls and rooms as fast as they were able.

“What are we…?” Steve tried again, and this time there was the faintest hint of desperation in his voice. Tony didn’t blame him, if it didn’t line up so perfectly he’d still think he was crazy too.

“We caused the end of the world. We left a message, and someone saw it through the window.”

“Tony, that doesn’t make sense.”

“Pym built it. He built it to stop the end of the world, and that’s what it’s trying to do. It’s trying to eradicate us. But it’s all already happened, don’t you see?”

“Stark, you’re talking in circles!”

“Exactly! Steve, the answer to the whodunit was all of us. We did this, and now we need to stop it.”

“Stop it?”

“It hasn’t happened yet. Here, in the future, in the reality where Richards and Pym saw what happened and decided to stop it, the attack hasn’t launched yet. But if we get there fast enough, we might be able to stop the ships.”

Steve hissed under his breath, and Tony had no idea if Steve believed him or not, if he saw how the mechanism worked, always automatically preparing to fire. Even if he didn’t, though, Steve clearly believe in something he’d said or maybe just in him (because Steve was kind of a wonderful idiot that way) and he pulled them along as the alarms started to go off overhead.

“How long have we got?” Steve asked shortly, probably trying to save his breath, and Tony winced through a particularly jolting step before pushing on.

“Probably about twenty seconds before the launch process starts. Maybe another five minutes before the first ship leaves.”

The siren was blaring overhead, and even if most of the machines were busy getting ready for the grand departure, some of them were bound to turn up for the party. The more guests the messier it was likely to be, and at this point all of it was just a waste of time, a distraction. It wasn’t like there was an off switch and Tony had no idea in hell what he was doing, but he knew that they had to be there in the room for whatever it was that happened next.

“Take a left,” he directed, and then they were moving that way and through a tunnel that slanted downwards, and Steve was gripping him hard enough that it was going to leave bruises.

The only sound for a few seconds was feet on concrete and harsh, ragged breathing.

“I don’t know where we are,” Steve said, and for possibly the first time in their acquaintance Tony wasn’t the one who was panicking.

“Stay with me,” he replied urgently, tightening his hold around Steve’s shoulder. “We’ve got to get there, so we have to be close. Pick a door Cap, and make it lucky, because this one’s got to count.”

Swearing under his breath, Steve took the second left.

The launching area opened up under them. Even Tony, who’d been expecting it in a way, was briefly struck speechless by the sight. Miles – literal, actual miles – stretched out in every direction, the decks hard to see through the thicket of oily black ships all in perfect lines, as far as the eye could see. It would have been beautiful if it weren’t so devastating, and if there were any time to think about it and what it meant, Tony would probably be sick.

Also that was probably the pain talking. It was saying a lot of things.

“…where?” Steve asked, taking only a minute to wrap his head around an impossible situation and understand simply that action was needed. He’d always been the most useful out of all of them, in a lot of ways.

“There!” Tony pointed, because it was the only real way to go. The ramps led down towards one of the docks where one of the smaller ships was moored. Overhead the sky churned, while all around the sound of engines began as a murmur, and then quickly crescendo’d towards an almost-deafening buzz.

Steve, arm tight around Tony, headed down the ramp. Neither of them needed to say that there wasn’t any going back.

Trying to run across boards was difficult, and trying to do it while supported by another person who was significantly taller than you was even harder. Tony nearly lost his footing in a flurry of cursing, but almost as fast they were up and going again.

“What do we do with the ship?” Steve asked, and Tony didn’t have the heart to tell him he didn’t know.

“We… we can stop something. This. We have to be able to.”

“Better go fast, then, because I think we’ve been spotted.”

At the foot of the ship, Steve unwound himself from Tony, looking back over his shoulder to gather what kind of fight he was going to be in for.

“Steve, no –“

“Get in, and tell me what we’re working with.”

Cursing another blue streak, Tony turned away from Steve before hauling himself up and through the entrance, although he stopped just long enough to look back out the door.

“Don’t fucking go anywhere or I’m forgetting your name and that you were ever born.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Steve shot back, all fake cool and bright, wild blue eyes.

Clenching his teeth, Tony forced himself over to the open console and chair that he could only assume had once been meant for a pilot.

No time to panic. Really, no fucking time to panic. Trying to remember the way the operating interface had worked upstairs, Tony blazed through the screens one after another, stealing numbers from different lines of code as he tried to understand what it was he was here to do. They were here and there had to be a fucking reason. There had to be.

In a moment the coordinates were streaming past his eyes, and Tony sat back sharply, before leaning forward again almost as fast and attempting to modify the values. They were changeable. Definitely changeable. But he didn’t have the data he needed, didn’t have all the information. Even if he could figure it out, the odds of being able to do it the two minutes and change they might have was maybe… fifty-fifty. Fifty percent odds at best.

“Steve,” he said loudly, trying not to sound like he was freaking out.

“Tell me, they’re coming.”

Staring at the screen, Tony took a breath before turning one more time to the door and moving over to it awkwardly and with his leg burning the entire time.

“The ship’s leaving. I can’t stop it.”

Steve looked back at him, and for one far too short moment they held each other’s eyes, Tony from above, and Steve standing below.

“So what now?”

“I might be able to change where it’s going.”

“Might be able to?”

Tony nodded, and he did his best swallow around the lump in his throat.

“There’s no time, Rogers. If I can change it, maybe we can go back. Stop it before it starts.”

“And if we can’t?”

“Then I’ll have fucked it up just enough that this is the ship that crashes into New York first.”

Steve was quiet for another moment, and Tony could see the metal soldiers, strange and twisted, as they spilled through the doors and started to careen down the ramps. He forced them out of his field of vision, though, taking and holding Steve’s eyes exclusively while Steve looked right back.

“I might be able to buy you some extra time. You asked for two extra minutes.”

“Don’t want ‘em anymore, offer’s expired.”

“Tony, this is for everyone. If I can get you out of here, and you can save everybody then that’s- then that’s worth it.” Steve blinked hard, not looking any less feverish, but he also didn’t waver.

“I’m not leaving without you. It’s as simple as that.”

“Remember how we talked about doing the wrong thing for the right reasons?”

And suddenly Tony realized that Steve was actually going to do this. Steve was going to stay here and die for the possibility of a slightly greater chance, and he’d be stuck in a ship, trying to think through realities and possibilities while Steve fucking Rogers was bleeding out on the docks.

He could. He couldn’t –

Oh, and he wouldn’t. With a gasping second (third?) epiphany, Tony grabbed for the door before leaning down for Steve’s hand.

“Hurry up and get in. I know where we’re going.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Steve said, all hard edges, and Christ, he couldn’t do this, they were literally fifteen seconds away.

“Steve, do you trust me?”

And a beat, a moment too long but just short enough, and then –

“I trust you.”

“Then trust me now, because Thor’s stupid ravens told me the answer. Steve, everything that’s possible is true. Heads and tails. Maybe we won’t remember one or the other, but we’re going to wind up at the beginning, and we’re also going to stop it. But I can’t do this without you, Steve. Please.”

Whether it was the desperation in his voice, his hand reaching and waiting, or Steve actually did just trust him that much, after a broken second of indecision there was a larger hand wrapping around Tony’s as Steve climbed up fast, and not a half second too late. Tony had to kick something hard to keep it away long enough to close the door, and he was seeing sparks and trajectories in his head as he stumbled back to the chair and dropped into it, the screens blazing back to life.

“You really think we can do this?” Steve asked from behind him, and Tony swallowed his own hope and despair and just nodded.

“I know we can. Hang on to something, Rogers, we are up, up and away.”

A hand gripped for a hold desperately as the engines shook and turned, and Steve was yelling something over the noise.

“Hey, Stark! Wherever we end up – I know we made it. And wherever we are, I’ll see you on the other side!”

Jaw clenched and eyes prickling Tony only had time for a breath as numbers flew and changed.

And then there was deafening roar as the sky split open —

— and then they were gone.

**Author's Note:**

>   1. This story requires a few thank-yous. First and foremost, I want to thank espadas, who provided the piece that inspired this fic. She’s not only crazy talented, but also completely lovely, and extremely patient. Thank you so much for all your help through this!
>   2. Secondly I need to thank my wonderful beta, redheartglow, because she listened to me ramble about time travel and different takes on multiple universes, and somehow still had the good grace to read and edit all of this for me in a ridiculously short period of time . You are so great.
>   3. I would like to note that there’s a hidden Easter egg ending in the story. It seems unfair not to mention it, so I will just tell you that, if you haven’t found it already, check the time. 
>   4. All of the places mentioned by name are real, but the people and geography are totally fictionalized.
>   5. I am not at all sorry for the gratuitous use and abuse of 616 characters and their total re-interpretation for my own ends. I regret nothing.
>   6. After that, all that’s left to say is thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this fic.
> 



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